


A Roll of the Dice

by mary_pseud



Series: Damnatio Memoriae [8]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe, BDSM, Body Modification, F/M, Gen, Imprisonment, Master/Slave, Rose Tyler (cameo) - Freeform, Sadomasochism, TARDIS - Freeform, Time Travel, colour changing skin, dice - Freeform, mental manipulation, naglons - Freeform, regenerative shock, shibari rope bondage, time lord regeneration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-06 23:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 39,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15896526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mary_pseud/pseuds/mary_pseud
Summary: The Doctor has just regenerated, and slips away from Rose to visit Sarah Jane and K-9. But soon they are embroiled in an interstellar war, and Sarah Jane falls into the clutches of an old enemy, Tragan the Naglon.  Events in this story take place immediately after 'The Christmas Invasion' and should be taken to supersede the episode 'School Reunion.'





	1. Should Old Acquaintances Be Forgot

Barcelona: a warm word, spoken by the Caribbean breeze and blown softly over the shores of Spain.

Barcelona!

A place to meet, to walk, to mingle, to sit in the sun and doze.

Those sitting in the sun on the beaches of Barcelona that day might or might not have noticed the appearance of a most atypical bathing machine: what looked like a London police box, complete with flashing light on top.

The woman who came out of the box looked strained: like she was holding back some revelation, some terrible change that she was refusing to allow herself to face. She stepped out of the police box and took a few steps, and then looked behind. As though someone was about to follow her out.

She brushed her blonde hair out of her eyes: was the police box wavering like a heat mirage?

And she waited.

* * *

 

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor - the new Doctor - stood by the control console.

Along with his new self, new teeth, new short messy brown hair, new everything in fact, he was wearing new clothes. A brown pinstripe suit and brown wingtips: he thought they suited him. The new him.

But instead of walking out the door and joining Rose, his hand fell on the console. And the TARDIS began to move.

"It's only for a little while," he told himself. "She'll never even notice that I've gone, I'll be there and back again, land in exactly the same spot."

He ran his hands through his hair.

"I just…before anyone else gets to know me, I need to get to know me. It's…it's all going too fast. I need to touch base, I need to-" and then he stopped, the words thick in his throat.

I need to go home, he thought to himself.

But home isn't there anymore.

But there are people in your life who make a place home: people with whom you are instantly comfortable, people who can be trusted. People who if you come scratching at their door at any hour, or wearing any body, would let you in and give you a nice cup of tea and time to rest, to chat. To get to know yourself.

So the Doctor set the TARDIS on her course, not far, not so far: to a London flat, south London, where a journalist of his acquaintance could be found. One with a sharp tongue, a kind heart, and a most unusual dog. A friend. Two friends, really.

He hoped she had a kettle on.

 

* * *

Sarah Jane Smith did indeed have a kettle on, as well as a bathrobe and a thick pair of warm slippers, and she was disinclined to open the door to the young man who had knocked.

"If you're the doctor, you should be next door, that boy's got a dreadful cough," she said.

"Not the doctor. The Doctor."

"The-" Sarah Jane's smile lit up her face. "Doctor!"

As though to prove it, he stepped aside and pointed to the corner, where a rather battered police box seemed to have taken up residence.

"Doctor, come IN! Now!"

He smiled as well, and stepped inside with a happy stride; and only in the back of his mind mourned the new lines that Sarah's smile drew around her eyes.

Time happens to all of us, he thought, as she got him a seat (he had to clear several folders of photos off of it) and got each of them a cup of tea. He put his teacup down on the table and exclaimed - "K-9!"

It was K-9, the robot companion in the shape of a rather stylised dog that he had sent to Sarah. But - he did not react. His ears stayed still. He sat there under the table, not moving.

"Doctor, I wish that you could take a look at him. Something's gone wrong with his motive unit, I think. He can't get around at all, so I keep him here so that I can talk to him. But I think he might be-"

The tea was handed to Sarah and the table was unceremoniously cleared; K-9 was atop it and the Doctor was undoing his side panels.

"Could it be his Blott coils?" he wondered aloud, sonic screwdriver already humming.

"I think it's his parallel buffer sorter, actually," said Sarah, looking on. The Doctor looked up at her with a pained look on his boyish face.

"His parallel buffer sorter?" he said.

"Well, that's what the manual suggests I replace. Unfortunately they haven't been invented yet, so-"

"Hmm." The Doctor tapped at his own temple with the sonic screwdriver. "Hmmm."

He took the teacup back from Sarah, took a sip, then leaned over and stared again into the inner workings of the robotic dog. Then he put the tea down and slapped his palms down on his knees, hard.

After which, he felt his knees a bit gingerly.

"Doctor?" asked Sarah.

"These knees are bonier than they used to be, just regenerated you know. Tell me, do these knees feel excessively bo-"

"I'm not going to feel and find out," she retorted. "You just regenerated? Shouldn't you be resting, or recuperating, or something?"

"No, no. I should be - getting in touch with myself, really. I think that's what I'm doing. I think that's why I came to see you."

He smiled, and like a ghost Sarah Jane saw the old Doctor, the Doctors really, that she had known, in him. Not ghosts, though. Quite real.

"You know, I think I do have a spare circuit or two I could use to get the old boy working again. But they're in the TARDIS. Perhaps I could just go over and look for them."

Sarah looked at him. She drank down the last of her tea, deliberately, and put down the cup. And then sat, her arms folded together, hands on elbows, and looked at him.

Just looked.

And then she smiled, and blinked once or twice too fast, and said, "Same old Doctor. And I suppose it would be easier if I just brought K-9 over with me, and then went dashing around the universe with you in bathrobe and slippers?"

"No, no, certainly not."

"Because I haven't the slightest intention of doing that."

He made more agreeing-type motions. "Of course, of course."

"So," she handed the Doctor her empty cup, and stood, "just go and rinse that out in the sink along with your own, while I put on a decent pair of walking shoes and some clothes, and we'll be on our way."

The Doctor rose as well, an empty cup in each hand, and called after her retreating back, "But we're just looking for a circuit, I'm sure it will only take a bit. A half hour."

A thump from the room where Sarah had vanished.

"Seventy minutes, at the very most!" He rinsed out the cups and put them in the drainer.

Opening and closing drawers noises.

"Plus installation time-"

And she was out, in trim khaki and neat ankle boots, with an improbable floppy yellow hat stuffed into one pocket. "Right, let's go," she said, heading for the front door.

The Doctor, rather nonplussed, closed K-9 up and picked him up in the approved rear-and-front hold; as he did he heard the robot whine, and impulsively held him closer. "Hang on boy, we'll have you set to rights," he whispered, and thought an antennae-ear might have twitched in reply.

As he followed Sarah, carrying the robot dog, he said, "But I'm not planning on going anywhere!"

At the door he was met by her, waiting, with key in lock and another smile bright enough to outshine the lights of London.

"That's what you always say," she said, while locking the door behind him. "And the next thing I know, I'm tumbling downhill with King Arthur and his Merry Men, or what have you, in hot pursuit. Something I learned from travelling with you, that's very useful for being a journalist: always be ready with a spare set of clothes, and always wear comfortable shoes."

She marched across the street and the Doctor followed, trying to walk and wiggle his toes in his brown shoes at the same time. They were comfortable enough, now, weren't they? Weren't they?

 

* * *

 

"You've done the place up proud," noted Sarah, admiring the TARDIS' dark gold interior.

"Well yes, the old girl could always do with some new attention. It makes her seem like a brand new time machine," said the Doctor, carrying K-9 through and into the TARDIS' interior.

Sarah Jane followed and stayed close: the TARDIS seemed to have an infinite number of rooms and passageways, and she remembered getting lost in here once. More than once.

So she stayed at the young man's back, (young man! Strange to think this was the same person as the tall gangly curly-haired fellow, or the elegant white-haired gentleman with the proud nose, that she had both known as the Doctor), until they fetched up in what looked like a microcircuit storeroom: cards, boxes, gears, springs, files, a vintage punch card reader Sarah thought, and thousands upon thousands of bits of hardware and circuitry were strewn around the room, hanging from the wall, stacked on shelves, and piled in heaps on the floor.

The Doctor picked his way to a table, but was unable to find a place to put the things he moved off of it; precariously balancing K-9 against his chest with one raised knee (Sarah muttered "Careful!"), he managed to scoop up a metal sheet that was leaning against the wall, put it down on top of the table's contents, and then put K-9 down on that. Then he started to rummage: around the table, then up on the shelf behind him. Then he concentrated his attentions on a single box full of widgets, bringing it over to the table and sorting through it intensely. They were very small widgets, and there were clear plastic boxes and vials in there containing even smaller ones.

Sarah Jane didn't want to interrupt, but she also didn't want to spent the next seventy minutes standing here watching him sort through widgets. When he paused and stared into space, abstracted, she asked him, "Is your kettle still in the same place?"

"What? Oh. Yes, it is," he said, diving back into the box with both hands.

So Sarah slipped out and followed the passages, and only had to backtrack once. Soon the kettle was hot, and Sarah was examining a package of crackers with dubious eyes (it said it expired one hundred fifty seven years from now, but was thick with dust and what looked like caked-on clay in the shape of a cuneiform seal) when the Doctor entered, followed by a familiar person. Of sorts.

"K-9!" Sarah exclaimed, putting the crackers down on the shelf and getting down to pet his somewhat worn metal back. "How are you?"

"Acceptable, Mistress," he said, sounding just the same as he ever did.

"Oh good, good, well done Doctor!"

"You were right, Sarah Jane, it was his buffer. I've taken the liberty of tucking two spares into his casing under a label, in case it happens again."

Sarah Jane hugged K-9 around the neck, and then hugged the Doctor too.

"Oh, it's so good to have you both back!" she exclaimed. "Now let's sit, let K-9 charge himself, and we can get caught up."

There was an arranging of cups and the finding of more suitable crackers, and getting a power receptacle adjusted so that K-9 could interface with it (as the Doctor explained it, the buffer had kept him from properly monitoring his environment or his energy levels, and his systems had shut down rather than be damaged).

"So tell me," said Sarah, wondering even as the words came out if it was terribly rude to ask, "you said you just regenerated. Which one is this?"

"Which one is - it's me, of course."

"I mean - which regeneration."

"Ah." The Doctor looked at the biscuit in front of him, and poked it with his finger, as if to see if it would flinch. Then he looked up and caught Sarah's eyes with his.

"My tenth, actually."

"Ten out of-" Sarah bit her tongue.

"Yes, I am rather running through them, aren't I?" The Doctor again ran his hand through his hair, and again failed to make it any neater. "At this rate I shan't last another millennium."

"That's not funny!"

"Yes, no, yes it's not." At a look from Sarah, "No really, it's not. But."

"But?"

"I don't know. Don't know that it matters really."

He stood up and started pacing back and forth, his wingtips whispering on the tile floor. "You see Sarah, I'm…what I mean to say is…I left you on Earth because I had to go to Gallifrey, remember? And I couldn't take you with me."

"Yes, of course I remember."

"And I always thought to myself, maybe someday, maybe, I could somehow smuggle you in, give you a look round."

"And?"

"And," the Doctor sat down, "and now I can't."

Sarah Jane fidgeted in her seat. She felt like there was some awful secret hiding in the room, waiting to come out.

The Doctor was drawing a spiral in the powdered sugar left on his plate. "I can't because Gallifrey isn't there anymore."

Oh.

The secret was here and it was huge, it was filling the room, it was choking her.

"Gallifrey is gone. The Time Lords - are gone. I am the last of them."

And looking at her with sad and wistful eyes, he picked up his plate and threw it upwards, against the ceiling; she gasped and covered her head with her arms as the fragments of pottery rained down.

"And I could have stopped it. I was there, Sarah, and you were too, in that corridor on Skaro, with those two wires in my hand. You were there! Touch them together and - if I had touched them together right then! If I had!"

Sarah's mind was sliding around the conversation, trying to pull out enough facts to make a whole. "The Daleks-"

"The Daleks destroyed Gallifrey because I failed to destroy them!" The Doctor ground his teeth, his face a mask of anguish. "If I only-"

"Master," came an electronic voice from around their knees.

"Yes what? What is it K-9?" asked the Doctor.

"I have absorbed sufficient energy to resume my functions. I would like to test my sensor array."

"Test your sensor array. Good idea, very good. Let's - let's - "

"Let's go somewhere and test it!" suggested Sarah Jane.

As though she hadn't seen this coming a mile away.

"Yes, I suppose we could but - someplace quiet, someplace safe, yes by all means safe," said the Doctor. He jammed his hands in his pockets. "Quiet and safe, lots of quiet and safe places in the universe, go find one."

He wandered out, and Sarah Jane gingerly brushed the top of her hair, to get out any bits of broken plate still remaining.


	2. Travels with Sarah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and Sarah Jane part ways.

In the TARDIS control room, the Doctor was flipping various controls when Sarah Jane and K-9 came in (K-9 had apparently been functional enough to observe the way they had taken to come in, and was quite useful in guiding Sarah out).

"I think I may have found just the place, but I want to make sure there's some atmosphere. Hate opening the door into a vacuum, dries out my sinuses," he said in a conversational tone.

That terrifying flash of self-hatred seemed to have vanished into thin air, but Sarah knew better: it was still out there, waiting to come back, it could be reflected back to him at any moment. But the longer it took, the longer she could keep him occupied and cheery, the more stable he ought to be in his new body.

She remembered UNIT, and dear old Dr. Harry Sullivan, who had had his hands very full for a day or so with a just-regenerated Doctor who did not want to be doctored. At all.

When did I start thinking of Harry as old? she wondered.

Aloud she said, "On a planet or off a planet?"

"What?" The Doctor looked at her. "Oh, it's off a planet, certainly, it's clear off the galactic plane. A spaceship. Seems to be, no, it's definitely unmanned, engines cold, no course set, but there's still atmosphere in the main hangar bay. And -"

He touched a control, and the TARDIS was filled with what seemed to be a dozen competing electronic warbles, high whistles, and gabbling language that Sarah couldn't capture.

"What's that noise?" she half-shouted.

"It's," the noise was silenced, "it's distress signals. Multiple distress signals. But they are all on very low power; nobody could possibly hear them out here. And there's no life form signals."

"Sounds perfectly safe, except for all the people yelling for help then," Sarah suggested.

"Oh not people, no. These must be automated distress signals. I'll just bet" - the Doctor touched his finger to the side of his nose - "I'll just bet that this is some sort of automated repair facility."

"A space towing service and garage, combined?" asked Sarah. "Let's hope they are up to their safety inspections, then."

K-9 had already wheeled himself to the TARDIS doors, and was sitting there with his nose to them, wagging his antennae of a tail. "I am ready to begin sensor scan testing, Mistress," he announced.

The Doctor shrugged, and opened the doors, and K-9 rolled outside.

Outside it was cold, and rather dim. In front of the closed doors of the TARDIS, K-9 spun on his axis, scanning in all directions.

It was a large metal hangar, with one end open to space; had been open, rather, but was now sealed off by a door the size of a small building. Scattered around the metal floor, in no particular order, were spaceships, or spacecraft, or satellites, or empty fuel pods.

Many of these spacecraft, the larger ones, were emitting electronic signals that K-9 interpreted as cries for help, for aid, for assistance.

Most spectacular was the giant dent in the metal deck, to one side of the room. The dent was ringed by burn marks and debris; it appeared that the ship resting there must have exploded. There were holes punched in the deck and the ceiling, and the surrounding ships; K-9 calculated that the debris must have passed through several decks, if not entirely through the ship.

He scanned for life forms. No.

But maybe…

Life encapsulated, life in suspension, is still life. But the beat and the pulse of such life is slow, slow. It seemed like there might be, might be, something like life in one of these ships: the rather small yellow one, shaped like a sine wave with a narrow rim raised off the floor all the way around. K-9 moved forward to investigate, and something moved forward to investigate him.

It was a robot, small and boxy, and it crept towards him - and stopped. K-9 scanned it; saw that it had also run out of power. The style of it, its age, suggested that it might be a part of the hangar ship's components.

The sensor testing seemed to have run perfectly, but K-9 was very much in favour of double-checking results. Since the Mistress was here, and he did not scan any danger, it seemed logical to ask her if she would like to investigate the possible life forms herself; this would please her, and also serve as a check on his sensor accuracy.

K-9 wagged his tail and turned back to the TARDIS, signalling for re-entry.

 

* * *

 

"Mistress, I have scanned the exterior environment. It appears to be a storage facility for spaceships and space going craft in distress. The facility has been damaged by debris, presumably originating from an exploding ship. The composition of the hull is eighteen percent-"

"Oh very good, very well done K-9," said Sarah, not really wanting to hear all the technical details of what the ship was made out of. "Any people?"

"Negative. There are no biological units in evidence. However, I detected faint life form signals from one of the stored ships. Mistress would like to investigate?"

"Well, I don't know. Do you think it's safe, Doctor?"

The Doctor frowned. "K-9, could the damage from the exploding ship have caused this ship to say, fall out of hyper and been unable to return to home base?"

"Unknown. I have not fully scanned the extent of the damage or the propulsion methods of this vessel."

"Well, perhaps we should both have a look around, do our good deed for the day. Give back to the universe what it has given us, and all. So-," he rummaged around, and found a long tan coat that he slipped over his suit, "let's go look see."

Once the three of them were outside, K-9 led them to the yellow ship. Sarah thought it was shaped rather like a helmet, or one of those smooth leafhopper bugs that disguises itself as a thorn on a stem. There was a green door on one side of it, which was about halfway open. With a little shimmying in its slot, it was induced to slide all the way back, and Sarah and the Doctor entered.

It was very dark; the inside lights were faint glows over their heads. The Doctor stopped and said, "No."

"No what?" said Sarah, peering through the gloom.

"No, I'm not stumbling around in the dark anymore. I'm going to go see if the lights in the main hangar can be brought up, so that we can see in here. Just," and he mentally redirected himself, "just investigate as you can, until I get back. K-9 will be here with you."

That actually was reassuring; K-9 was quite capable of defending his Mistress in a pinch. Outside there was a clang, and a clatter. And then, slowly, the lights came up outside. Flickering on in one corner, then sweeping alight across the entire bay. The spaceships piled here and there on the floor looked even smaller.

The Doctor came trotting back in, talking a mile a minute. "There was a piece of debris wedged into one of the power leads, and would you believe it, three little robots were there picking at it, trying to get it loose. I was afraid it might be charged, so I whacked it loose with a ceramic pole and-" and the Doctor noticed that Sarah Jane was not paying attention.

And then he saw why she was not paying attention.

The light streaming in behind them was reflected dully off the walls and ceiling, and it illuminated a long low shape lying at the far end of the room they stood in.

From the end of the shape closest to them, a pale oval glimmered at them, set with the almost universal pattern of sockets and teeth.

A skull, Sarah thought. A-

The lights suddenly glowed brighter from the ceiling of the cabin, and the Doctor jumped.

It was a skull and it was attached to a corpse; it seemed to be more dried than rotten, stretched across the floor in an attitude of crawling or straining, hands out on the remains of a withered leather carpet. But it was most certainly dead now.

Underneath them came the whine of machinery; Sarah looked over her shoulder, but the door was showing no tendency to move.

"The repair facility must have a way of charging the ships in dry dock," said the Doctor. "Now that we've got the power flowing, I presume they can start calling for help properly, and this storage facility, or whatever it is, can take them where they are supposed to be."

Sarah looked down at the alert square head of K-9. "K-9, that" - she pointed to the corpse - "isn't the source of the life readings, is it?"

"Negative."

The Doctor stepped around the edge of the room to avoid the remains of the carpet, and was eyeing the corpse. "Look here, Sarah," and she did, seeing a dark slash that went through the corpse and through the carpet and on into the floor.

"It looks like when that ship out there exploded, a piece of debris came in through somewhere and killed the pilot."

"But why is K-9 sensing life forms then?"

"I don't know. Emergency pod? House plant in one of the other rooms?" There were four doors opening off the room they were in, all dark; the Doctor walked around the edge of the carpet again to go into the far one. "Looks like the control deck." He stepped into the next room. "Personal quarters?"

Sarah had gone into the door nearest her, and turned at the sound of his voice. "Looks like someone's room h"

'BLOOP'

K-9 detected the noise, but it took him a moment longer to correlate life form and energy readings. He swivelled from one side to the other, scanning, detecting.

A stasis field had been activated in the two rooms; the Master and Mistress were frozen, locked away. The field explained why their life form readings had vanished. The Master was trapped with his back to the door, one foot in mid-air; the Mistress had just been turning back, so he could scan three quarters of her profile, see her unmoving chest, her still lips, and reassure himself that it was just a stasis field.

More machinery noises from the underside of the ship, more clicking of relays. The overhead lights were almost up to full spectrum now. And behind him, a ticking noise, as of tiny metal feet on metal.

K-9 had been scanning the walls of the room, trying to determine where the stasis machinery was located. It appeared to be located under the floor, which meant that he would have to try and burn away under the Master and Mistress' feet - no, unacceptable solution, when the field was interrupted they would fall onto red hot metal!

Cut off the stasis field's power supply?

The sound of feet had multiplied; K-9 turned to investigate.

Outside the ship, the metal floor was running over with little metal robots, and more and more of them were coming out of the walls, converging on the yellow ship.

K-9's sensors confirmed that the door of the TARDIS was closed, as one of the robots dashed past him with tiny feet and started jumping up and down in front of the Mistress, shouting something in a high pitched squeal. Then it popped out a gun to match its tiny size and directed a laser beam at the Mistress' foot!

The beam stopped at the edge of the doorway, of course, when it met the stasis field. But that was enough for K-9. He deployed his own weapon and fired.

The tiny robot squealed again and turned to attack K-9, but K-9 fired again, spoiling its aim. The robot scuttled back out the door, and K-9 rolled forward, to guard and to defend the entry.

He would start defending now, from the looks of it; his first burst caught three of the robots and sent them tumbling, and then he started methodically burning them, stinging them, as they marched up to the door to try and attack the Mistress and Master.

But they just kept marching, just kept marching, and there were more and more of them scurrying up, lining up to join the attack.

Behind K-9 there was even more machinery sounds, and he monitored most carefully behind as well as before him.

Two metal tanks were extruding themselves from the floor of the main room, through a hatch that had ripped through the remains of the carpet; the huddled figure of the corpse fell into the opening and vanished. The tanks were just about the size to hold a standard humanoid, and as power flowed K-9 could confirm that they were the source of the life form readings. Passengers in suspended animation, he assumed, as he quickly ran a check on his own power levels: good, but not infinite. The passengers would hopefully revive and release the Master and Mistress from the stasis field.

The tanks opened and one exploded with activity; the figure inside clawed at the thick layer of gelatine encasing it, tore through it, pulled itself loose with a (rather comical) slurping noise, and then staggered upright.

The inhabitant of the other tank was in distress; its movements were feeble, confused. The first figure reached in and tore into the sealed tank, through the gelatine, and hauled out someone who lay prone on the floor, breathing heavily.

The walking figure came up behind K-9, still firing his weapon and clearing the doorway, and he rapped out, "Attention! I am in need of assistance! Free my Master and Mis-"

At the word Mistress, he found himself scooped up, swept up in a magnetic field emitted by some device the figure held, and hurtled out the door!

He landed, rolled, and luckily regained his base. He spun, and saw the figure sweeping the robots away from the doorway - and then closing it. With K-9 on the outside.

 

* * *

 

Inside the ship, the second to leave the tank was still in distress, and the first went to it, cradled it, rocked it back and forth.

A woman's voice, "Breathe now, breathe. I know you can. It's been a while, but you can." The two figures drew close, close enough to touch foreheads.

"Can you hear me? Here?"

"No," said the gasping man. "But - I can hear you."

"Good. Well…let's see where we are then."

The woman went to a cabinet by the door, and drew out long loose heavy robes. "Here," she tossed a yellow one to the man who was still on the floor, twitching, "you are cold."

He pulled the robe around and over himself, staring at his limbs as the cloth covered them. The he staggered to his feet, and looked around.

He went to the room where the Doctor hung, frozen. He stared carefully at the stranger, his striped garments, his leather shoes, but learned nothing. Then he turned to the opposite door and looked.

And, slowly, he fell to his knees.

When the women stepped back out of the room where the controls were flickering to life (and a rather feisty automated weapons system was starting to nibble at the encroaching robots), the man turned and flung himself at the hem of her red robe. Gripping her feet, he sobbed, "Goddess, forgive me!"

She looked down at him; her eyebrows lofted up and then back.

"And why should I forgive you?" she said, in her coldest tone.

"Forgive me Goddess, forgive me for ever doubting your divinity. You have given me life, you have given me a body again, and you have brought me her! Her!"

He dared to rise to his knees and point at the figure standing frozen, facing out towards the room, a little turned away. Then he threw his arms around his Goddess' waist, hugging her like a drowning man.

She stroked the hair of the man embracing her, and stared. "Are you absolutely certain that I have brought you the right - reward, for your service?"

"Yes, absolutely, I will never forget her, never! That is Sarah Jane Smith!"

"Ah," the Goddess smiled. "And this other intruder, could it be the Doctor?"

"No," said her worshipper, shaking his head so that little globs of gelatine slid off his hairs. "He is too young."

"Well, and so. As it happens, the abduction machine is being rather pressing in its demands for payment. It seems that it is out of contact with its controllers, and desperate for energy and repair crews. It seems only fair that we offer them something for what they have done so far.

"We owe them nothing!" the man snarled, his face pulsing with colour.

"We will give them - that biological. And the little robot that I chucked out the door, and whatever vehicle they came in. That should distract them long enough for us to get well away."

A computerised voice came from over their heads. "Hull breech sealed. Power drain from attacking ship's systems complete. Ready for space."

"Computer. Prepare to drop stasis field only in Room Three." She handed the man a short truncheon. "If you would do the honours?"

The stasis field flicked off; the Doctor put down his foot, heard the clattering of metal feet from outside, started to turn - and the truncheon took him hard at the nape of the neck, flooring him.

Hard wet hands pulling him, hauling him up onto someone's shoulders; moving; a door opening; a clear cold voice shouting "We offer one biological, one robot and one travel machine in payment! Final offer!" and he was dropped, tossed, rolled to lie in a pile of kicking, twisting little robots.

"Master!" came the welcome voice of K-9; he had been struggling to approach the ship, only to be repulsed again and again by the little robots.

"K-9! Where's Sarah?"

"Still inside, Master!"

The Doctor turned - and fell as the yellow ship slid sideways, over the deck; the clanking of myriad metal - legs? - from underneath it suddenly reminded the Doctor of a tortoise. It dodged across the deck, skipping between the various piles of ships and debris, and then a weapon spat from its flank, a hatch opened, and it was gone.

Gone.

The Doctor rose to his feet, ignoring the little robots. One of them promptly shot a laser beam into his foot, and he shouted, hopping, then raised his foot to stamp -

And faced a circle of tiny robots, all pointing their tiny guns at his feet.

He stopped, and put his foot down. Slowly.

One of the robots ticked forward and spoke, in a slow voice.

"Biological unit. You are offered as payment for energy and repairs to departed ship Righteous Flea. What are your skills?"

"What are my skills? Well, I can sing, I think, no maybe I can't…I can fix things, I think I fixed your energy system just now, didn't I?"

The little robot replied, "Yes. You must make all repairs."

The Doctor looked out across the hangar floor, at the dozens of ruined spaceships, and his hearts quailed. "All of those?" he gestured.

"No. We must be repaired, our ship must be repaired, that we may take these ships for-"

"For?" prompted the Doctor politely.

"For payment processing and further repair."

"Hmm, repairs on repairs. You know, considering the hole that was punched in the Righteous Flea, it seems strange that you were charging them already for the repairs."

The row of tiny guns raised, and the robot groaned out, "Law ends with atmosphere."

"Ah yes." The Doctor winced. "I've heard that one too, not a very nice philosophy, but effective when ruthlessly enough applied."

"Master!" K-9 had won his way to the Doctor's feet; he spun and menaced the surrounding robots. "We must locate the Mistress!"

"K-9, yes, we must. But - first we need to get out of here." He addressed the tiny robots. "I must be given data on the Righteous Flea's course so that I may rejoin her after my period of service is done."

"Period of service? You are ours. You are payment. We own you."

The circle of little robots inched closer…

 

* * *

 

When the stasis field went off, Sarah Jane didn't know it.

All she knew was that the dim room had exploded with light; reflexively she covered her eyes, squinting. Then she dropped her arm.

Standing in front of her, in the main room, were two figures in shapeless robes. The one to the front, slightly shorter, was pointing a nasty looking gun at Sarah's navel. The Doctor and K-9 were nowhere to be seen.

She gulped, and raised her hands to the side, up and out.

In apparent response the figure swept back its hood - her hood. It was a woman, with bristling wild black hair every which way that looked like a cat had slept in it. Purple stripes ran down her cheeks - no, Sarah decided, they were raised up from her skin. Scars maybe?

The woman raised her chin and said, "I am Pilot Avva Omet-J, Sast. Identify yourself."

"I - I'm Sarah Jane Smith, of Earth. Human," she added, unable to decide if Sast was this person's planet or species or-

"Ahhhh," came a long sigh from the figure in the yellow robe. It was a smug, self-satisfied sound, and it made all the hairs stand up on the back of Sarah's neck. Avva turned and looked up at the figure in yellow.

"Would you like to take it from here?" she asked.

The figure nodded, and Avva casually handed over the gun and stepped aside.

The one in yellow came forward and Sarah stepped back, stepped back, and found herself against the wall - this might be someone's cabin but it was tiny! - and the figure filled the doorway. It seemed to be staring at her from under its hood, which shadowed its face so well that Sarah had no idea what it might be. Who it might be. She could hear its breathing, it sounded fast. Now Sarah, she scolded herself, it's an alien, just because it sounds like it's panting doesn't mean that it's - panting. Maybe the air in here is thin for it.

The figure raised the hand that was not pointing the gun at her. It raised the hand slowly, slowly, the back to Sarah. It passed the hand in front of its face and then slowly pushed its hood all the way back, and slashed its hand down, baring its face all at once.

Baring his face.

That face.

Sarah's mouth opened but there was no air, nothing to breathe in, no scream to come out.

It was a flushed warty purple face, with terrible pale colourless eyes and thin lips. The hair was wild, like the other one's, twisted and slimy. But the eyes - the eyes knew her.

And she knew them.

"Sarah Jane Smith, the little journalist girl," came the hated, the despised voice from between those thin lips. "We meet again."

Sarah swallowed, and said, "You're Tragan. Tragan from - Parakon. The Naglon."

Tragan smiled and said, "Yes." And lunged.


	3. Captives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor exchanges one set of captors for another; Sarah Jane and Tragan have questions for each other.

"I shouldn't be doing this," said the Doctor to himself, working on the fused circuits that filled the wall space in front of him, cutting them with the hand torch and tearing them out. A steady stream of tiny robots dragged off each handful of material as soon as it hit the floor, and other robots waited around the damaged area, bearing replacement parts. "I should be calm, I should be resting, recovering, getting inside myself, letting my personality settle-"

"You must work. We must be repaired." The little robot at the Doctor's ankle might or might not have been the one who had speared his foot through with a hair-thin laser. They all sounded the same. The Doctor looked down at it.

"Once this ship is functional, and it returns to home base with its hijacked-"

"Rescued!" reproved the tiny robot.

The Doctor paused, and went on more slowly. "Once this ship returns to home base, what will happen to me? And my ship?"

He gestured to the TARDIS on the other side of the bare hangar floor; it was ringed about by more of the tiny robots. K-9 sat stubbornly outside the circle of defenders; he scanned them and they scanned him. At least, until they found another task for K-9 to do.

The little robot did not answer; it had already told the biological unit once that it was owned property; there was no reason to say it again.

Other robots worked on the captured ships that remained. Some of those ships had also managed to tap into the power now streaming through the hangar, and the robots laboured to cut loose their cables, turn off their microwave absorbers. They seemed to want to keep the ships locked down in their positions, powerless; and the ships equally were motivated to try and draw enough power to escape.

The Doctor shook his head, not side to side but a steady trembling. He could feel his personality, his self, trying to find its place inside of him, but all this agitation, it was only making things worse. He found himself thinking too hard, too long, of terrible things: destruction, Daleks, doom, death…

He was afraid of what strange angle, what odd level, his mind might find when his recovery from regeneration stress was complete.

And he was even more afraid of the people who had thrown him arse-over-teakettle out of their ship, and flown away - with Sarah on board.

Where was Sarah Jane?

* * *

 

Tragan lunged and Sarah tried to duck, but there was no room. He had her by both wrists, had her pinned against the wall with his weight, and his face was horribly close to hers. His hot breath blew in her face. His smile wasn't really a smile, it was more of an open-mouthed snarl, and his teeth were very white against his black gums.

She stared at him, revolted, seeing how his face puffed and rippled with excitement at the sight of her. Sarah had tried to forget that, the revolting way his skin moved on his skull. It had given her nightmares. For years after he had abducted her (well, to be honest, she had snuck aboard his ship just before it took off) to Parakon, she had awakened at night; thinking she could still see his alien face hovering over her, hear his gloating voice in her ears. He was evil, pure evil. And here he was. Again.

His skin shivered like a horse's trying to shake off a fly. She cringed away, eyes wide, and he leaned after her - and her hand clawed for the gun that was pinning down her left wrist in Tragan's hand, trying to claw it loose. She pulled and twisted, but her hand was too well pinned. She stretched, sliding her wrist under Tragan's palm - she thought she might have a finger on the trigger -

Tragan let go of her wrist and simply chucked the gun over his shoulder, out of her reach. In fact it went straight out through the door, which closed behind it. Then his hand returned to pursue and seize her wrist again. She was fighting, but he was stronger; slowly he forced her arms out from her shoulders, stretching them to each side. He said in her face, too loudly, "You can't imagine how long I've been waiting to have my hands on you again."

Then he butted close to her, chest to chest, his mouth by her ear. He whispered, "How long?"

"What?" gasped Sarah.

"How long, how long has it been? Since Parakon? How long have I been here?" His face was unreadable as always, but his voice was - haunted. Uncertain.

Sarah swallowed. "Let me go and I'll tell you."

Tragan moved back a bit, so that he could see her determined face, lips set and hard dark eyes staring into his. The flesh of his face started to bubble like lumpy oatmeal, the mauve running with bursts of purple. He leaned closer, bringing his soft pulpy flesh even closer to hers. Sarah could imagine how it would feel like hot slugs squirming on her skin, she could feel the hairs on his face brushing her, hear him chuckle-

"Thirty years, at least thirty years, now get away!" Sarah said with a shriek, and yanked sideways, twisting away from his touch. Surprisingly enough, Tragan let her go, and she stumbled and then turned, her back to the cabin. Unfortunately that still put Tragan between her and the door.

Tragan was standing inhumanly still - par for the course. Only his lips moved as he said, "Thirty years? It was only yesterday, that I met - Avva. I knew that couldn't be true. So why did I believe it. Why?"

Tragan moved towards Sarah, slowly, and she backed away, but there was nothing behind her except - an empty bed. Nothing to hit him with except a pillow. The pillows didn't seem to have pillowcases; she couldn't put one over his head and get around him-

He shook his head sharply as though to clear it, and his voice went from vague to venomous. "But now that I have you again, I can hardly decide where to begin."

"You can begin by doing nothing. Avva might not like it if you hurt me, you know!" It was a blind shot on Sarah's part, but anything was worth a try right now.

Tragan's face swelled so alarmingly that for an instant his eyes vanished, and his voice was thick when he replied, "Oh, Avva is quite the connoisseur of pain and torment and nightmares, I assure you. I have first hand experience. She makes me look like a novice beside her appetites. Don't go crying to her for mercy."

Sarah Jane swallowed. The first time she had met Tragan, he had been working with a particularly loathsome man, well alien, called Freeth. Was Avva another Freeth?

Tragan continued. "Let's play a little game, shall we? Tell Me Tell You. Why don't you tell me, oh, how you got out here. And perhaps, only perhaps now, I will tell you the fate of your companions."

Companions, yes the Doctor and K-9! But the Doctor was the person who had caused Tragan's downfall. Telling Tragan that the Doctor was now his prisoner, if he was here, did not seem like a good idea. And K-9 had a few tricks under his hood; maybe he could help her escape. She had to escape. Tragan was a monster. Escape. But how?

Sarah's mind raced. What to say? Tragan came close to her, too close again, and bent to whisper conspiratorially, "I was on Parakon, then on a Sast ship. Avva, she-"

The door opened with a funny noise, and Tragan started to snarl "- going to tear your heart out and eat it in front of your eyes!" He snatched at Sarah, who had little trouble in looking frightened and climbing up on the bed, threatening Tragan with one booted foot.

"I'll kick your lights out if you try!"

There was a footstep and Avva's face appeared beside Tragan's. She must be standing on tiptoe to get over his shoulder. She said in a sweet tone, "Don't put that in your mouth, Tragan. You don't know where she's been."

Without the slightest hint of revulsion she pressed her striped cheek into Tragan's throbbing face; Sarah watched astounded as he blossomed with new colours, ivory and white flesh moving out from where she touched, racing asymmetrically across his face. Tragan's eyes grew wide and staring, as though he was gazing into a great light, very far away.

"Cruel Tragan," said Avva, her eyes hooded with - satisfaction? "Toying with your prey. I hate to leave you here with idle time running through your hands. Your new hands."

She ran her hands down Tragan's sides, down his arms, and kneaded at his wrists, rubbing her fingertips in little circles. "I will be in the control room for a little while, Tragan. While I'm busy, perhaps you could make me something pretty. Something for me to rest my eyes on." Sarah noted absently that the purple stripes along the alien woman's face ran out into what looked like wattles along the edge of her jaw.

"How should I please you best, Mistress?" said Tragan humbly, his eyes down-turned now. Humbly? Mistress? Sarah Jane had never seen the cruel Naglon humble for a second. Who was this Avva that Tragan, of all people, would defer to her? Even Freeth hadn't had this effect on Tragan.

"You know my tastes. Use your imagination, and the materials at hand. I will be your attentive audience - as soon as the news relay protocols finish upgrading," she said, slipping out of the cabin and leaving them - ulp! - alone together.

Tragan looked back at Sarah, the faraway look in his eyes fading, until he was clearly looking at her, and only her.

Only her.

 

* * *

 

The robot assigned to monitor the new biological unit found it sitting on the floor, face on knees, and rocking gently back and forth.

"You sit, you do not work," it criticised.

"I don't feel like working. I just want to slack off," the unit declared.

"All must work," squawked the robot.

"That's not what the communication unit I just repaired says. Or say, maybe you haven't decoded it yet and sent it to general broadcast?"

The little robot paused, and then scuttled away.

And the Doctor was up, running, his leather soles slipped on his first stride but he caught himself. He dashed for a control panel and started banging down rows of switches with his forearms. Across the deck, the clamps holding down the various ships started to open, and those ships that still had power leaped to ignite engines, levitate, or fire weapons to free themselves. The Doctor spared one moment to beam at the sight. What a row! What a smashing pileup!

Not that these dreadful little robots didn't deserve to lose their captives.

Then he ran for the TARDIS. The ring of robots around it was scampering in all directions, and K-9 was nowhere to be seen.

Where was K-9?

He could take what was coming better than the Doctor, anyway, hopefully: he slipped the key from his pocket, stuck it into the door at arms-length, flew inside just as the entire hangar bay rang like a gong as the doors were breached. There was a whoosh that faded away to nothing as the air was evacuated out through the breach.

The doors were pulled loose from the outside, and there was immediate traffic outflow as satellites and ships scuttled free of their captor. At least one of them was intersected by a laser and destroyed, but others successfully fled.

The TARDIS doors slammed shut and the Doctor leaned against the console, gasping. With a shaking hand he reached for a control - the external monitors? No, that wasn't it, this was.

Outside was chaos; two ships had torn themselves through the hangar bay doors and deployed troops, anonymous in heavy space armour, which were mercilessly smashing the robots with energy weapons. The robots fought back, futilely, and were crushed underfoot. The Doctor hoped that K-9 would not roll into view. More soldiers were dragging boxes and machines over to the computer terminals, and that clinched it for the Doctor. They were here for information, not just to shoot the place up.

There was a whistling noise outside as an energy barrier was sealed and air rushed back into the hangar; as it did and the pressure built, the Doctor could hear an audio broadcast message, the same one he had heard before he began his dash:

"-ea! We seek the Righteous Flea! We seek the Righteous Flea! We-"

"Hello!" said the Doctor, waving to the troops from the TARDIS' open doors. He was instantly staring down the muzzles of far too many alien weapons.

Probably magnetic sweepers, he thought, but still no reason to give them a chance to fire, wouldn't do the contents of his pockets any good. "I am also looking for the Righteous Flea, I saw it leave from here." As one of the soldiers advanced on him, he turned and locked the TARDIS door, then turned back to see a fist in his face.

The fist made contact, and his head rang against the TARDIS door, he staggered but kept his feet.

"I'm sorry, have we met?" he asked.

The soldier paused, and then folded back its - his - helmet in two halves, that hung on each side of his head like clam shells. The face revealed was contorted from combat, and bleeding from an abrasion down one cheek.

It was also distressingly hairy, overly mauve and overall quite restive. Positively throbbing with enthusiasm.

"Ah. Naglons, I see, how very, very, unpleasant of you to show up!" babbled the Doctor. The Naglon ignored his words and stepped forward, forward until he was toe to toe with the Doctor and the weapon in his left hand was pressing alarmingly hard against the Doctor's midsection.

"You are the one who lies about the Righteous Flea. We will tear your lies from you before you die," the Naglon said intimately. "The Flea was not here, the Flea was-"

"The Flea was indeed here, I saw it leave, they threw me out in fact!"

The Naglon bent close enough that the hairs on its face tickled the Doctor's nose. "They?"

"They, well someone, someone was in the ship that was here, the little robots all around," he gestured at the smears of metal that were all that remained of his little tormenters, "they said it was the Righteous Flea. Well, this person, or people, they grabbed me and threw me out to these robots, which kept me as a prisoner! Really, is there no overseeing of these operations? No regulations?"

"This is an abduction machine," snarled the Naglon. "It was built to fly unmanned in space for decades or centuries, seizing ships and holding them for ransom. When reports of its presence stopped, it was assumed to have been destroyed. We have been tracking it for the last day as it broadcast your lies-"

"I? I sent no broadcast," said the Doctor, straightening up.

"No?"

"No. The ships here were sending broadcasts, and the Righteous Flea was powering up when I was - ah, ejected from it. Look, really, can't we be on the same side here? When the Flea left, it took a friend of mine with it, I really have to find-"

The Naglon paused, then took the Doctor's shoulder in one hand and shoved him away from the TARDIS, towards one of the invading ships. "Search him. Scrape him," he ordered to the soldiers who advanced to take the Doctor, one on each arm.

"Scrape?" the Doctor asked.

"To the bones?" asked one of the Naglon soldiers in turn; it was amazing how a faceless voice could leer, the Doctor thought.

"No, I want him alive for questioning when we have drained this ship," ordered the Naglon leader, and off the Doctor went, protesting all the way.

By a pile of scrap sat a robot in remarkably good repair, not looking at all like the little ship robots, and staying very still. K-9 had not been in a position to aid the Doctor, and the Doctor had come out of the TARDIS of his own will, not forced out. And K-9 had calculated that the magnetic guns currently crushing the tiny robots were more high-powered versions of the one that had thrown him out of the yellow ship, and he had no wish to face them again.

 


	4. Bondage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tragan is working on a little arts & crafts project. Sarah Jane is going to be a part of it, whether she likes it or not.

Tragan had started with six ridiculously long lengths of rope; as he pulled the ropes out of the bag where they were kept, ran them through his hands, a part of Sarah cringed in fright.

The other part remarked how much he looked like a particularly demented old auntie about to start a massive knitting project, and tried to laugh.

Ha ha.

"You can't expect me to sit still for this. Not after last time," she declared. "I'll fight you!" She stood with her back to one wall, one hand out and the other balled into a fist.

Tragan looked at her with a somewhat distant air, and then down at the green and black ropes spooling through his hands. "My Mistress has asked me to make her something. Now, I could present her with your aesthetically bound form-"

"No!" complained Sarah. "Why don't you make her a, a plant hanger or something?"

Tragan's face seemed to bow inwards, and then resumed its normal bubbling. "Your aesthetically bound form need not be your aesthetically bound living form, mind you. I think you might turn the most enchanting shade of blue if I cut off your air for long enough. Shall we find out?"

Sarah pictured her roped corpse being offered up to Avva. Would she give Tragan an award maybe, Best Dead Human? Mounted on a little plaque, like a fish.

"Or I could present her with a beautiful bouquet, where every flower petal was a piece of your skin, and the stems carved from your bones." Tragan seemed to be satisfied with the ropes; he held them together at one end and tied a solid knot. "The choice is yours, of course."

"Which do you think she'd prefer?"

"An interesting question," said Tragan, purpling a bit. His flat voice offered no clues to what he was thinking. Maybe he really didn't know.

She shuddered, imagining Tragan cutting her. But she couldn't, she couldn't just sit down for him. She quickly moved to the spaceship's door. On the other side of this must be the TARDIS.

The Doctor. Where was he? And where was K9?

If Tragan got his hands on the Doctor, especially in his current befuddled state, Tragan would do - terrible things, unimaginable things to him, surely. Sarah had been thinking of threatening Tragan with the Doctor; now she realised that she must not mention him, must not give him away. She had to distract Tragan.

Even if it meant submitting. Well - pretending to submit.

"I hope you aren't planning on opening that door, vacuum would not do either of us much good," said Tragan, from right behind her. She hadn't even heard him moving.

She did not turn around. "What do you mean, vacuum?"

"I mean this ship, the Righteous Flea, has taken off from the abduction machine. It took off," Tragan paused.

"When," he whispered.

"What?" Sarah whispered back.

"When did it take off? I heard nothing, the Mistress must have cut her way out of the other ship and." He stopped, and then started whispering again, apparently to the ship. "Computer, quarter volume. Computer, what is my status?"

There was a machine tinge in the voice that murmured from the speaker above them. "Tragan, honoured passenger. All computer rights excepting lockout."

"Computer, how long ago did we leave the abduction machine?"

"Eleven hours ago standard."

Sarah's stomach dropped. Eleven hours? She hadn't been in here eleven hours.

"Computer, how long was the stasis field in Room One active within the last twenty six hours?"

The machine replied, "Ten hours forty two minutes."

Sarah asked, "That flash of light - that was a stasis field?" She knew what that was at least, a field where time was frozen. She was whispering too, still facing the door.

Tragan's voice was expressionless as always - and low, very low. "There is a stasis field built into the Righteous Flea's various compartments, for storage and for defence. When you entered the side room, the Righteous Flea put you in stasis and started the revivification program. But when the field was turned off, I stepped into the room with you, and the door closed. And - the Mistress turned on the field again. I did not know. She did not tell me."

"So - no time passed for us?" asked Sarah. "Tragan, tell me, what is going on here? Who is that woman, what's happening?"

Tragan's voice was quiet, but he was so close that Sarah could feel his breath against the back of her neck. "I'll answer your questions. If you stand still to be bound. And talk softly." Slowly, he started to coil up the rope; the sound of it dragging across the floor and the soughing of the air system were the only noises in the cabin.

Sarah closed her eyes. Without turning around, she put her arms behind her and crossed her wrists. Half-shouting, she said, "Just do it, just tie me and drag me, hurt me, you'd like that wouldn't you? You certainly did on the trip to Parakon, I can still remember the sounds of my joints creaking." And then, quietly, "Tell me, please."

Silence from behind her, then the feeling of something small and hard touching her in the middle of her back, just below her shoulder blades.

"This is where the first knot will go. You can put your arms at your sides, Miss Smith." More dragging of ropes, and then Tragan passing three long loops of it over each of her shoulders, and reached around her to tie a knot in them, just at the top of her breastbone. She stood absolutely still, not wanting to brush against him. The feel of him standing so close to her back revolted her enough.

"You know, if you turned to face me, I wouldn't have to put my arms around you," he whispered, much too close to her ear. "Surely you must find it unpleasant."

"Very," replied Sarah dryly. "But I'd rather not turn." She tried to distract herself from his hands moving in front of her chest, pulling the ropes through the knot he was making. "Why aren't you dead, anyway? I thought I saw you die on Parakon, in the Arena box."

No, shouldn't have mentioned that, it will remind him of the Brigadier, the Doctor. But instead Tragan's voice was casual as he adjusted the long loose oval of rope over her shoulders. "I inflated my facial bladders with blood and then deliberately burst them, yes. Excruciatingly painful. Unfortunately one of the guards had read up on Naglons and saw me taken to prison rather than the morgue. And then Avva."

Sarah waited through his pause. "Avva what?" she finally whispered.

"She broke me out of prison. She said I was to pay my own ransom once I was out. I tried to - cheat my way out of paying. And she. Then she did."

Tragan twisted the ropes in his hands until they creaked. "I do not think that she killed me. But she did - everything else. Unless of course she did kill me, and this is the afterlife."

Sarah felt the muscles in her neck tense. "I certainly hope that you and I never end up in the same afterlife!"

"Why? On the principle that my heaven would be your hell, and vice versa?"

Tragan stopped talking then, and passed the ropes back from the knot on her chest, two going around each side of her, tying her arms to her sides. He pulled the ropes tight, but not breathlessly tight, and asked, "Comfortable?"

Yes or no, what to answer? "Yes," she said, hoping that was the right answer.

"Excellent. Now, if you could just put your forearms together behind your back, parallel to the floor," and Tragan pulled and moved her arms with one free hand, the other presumably holding the loose ends of the rope out of the way, "yes, that's it, now keep still."

"Say cheese?"

"Always the light touch," Tragan purred, wrapping her forearms together with the rope. The rope went around her forearms, around her elbows too, and seemed to pass back and forth between her upper arms, stopping now and then as Tragan knotted it, but when he finally said "There now!" and tied off what must be the ends, she was surprised that it didn't hurt. She certainly had no hope of moving or freeing her arms, but this wasn't the sort of torture-worthy binding that he had put her in before.

Of course, for all she knew, he could pull one rope and fold her up like a pretzel. But instead, his hands rested on her shoulders.

"I'm afraid that for me to continue properly, I really must insist on you turning to face me," said Tragan, as courteously as a man offering to hold the door for his sweetheart. Stiffly, unwillingly, Sarah turned, expecting a blow or a pinch or some twist of the knife - excuse me, rope, she thought bitterly - but instead Tragan merely guided her forward a few steps.

He took up the two long ends of robe that were dangling loose, and Sarah tensed, but he simply measured them out between his fingers, and then tied them together in a knot. And another knot further along the two ropes, and another. When he was done the two strands of rope dangled down Sarah's front, tied into a series of loops, with the last knot almost touching the ground. Tragan stepped back, as though to examine how the knots were spaced, then clucked his tongue and started to loosen one and move it back a few centimetres.

Sarah was trying not to look at Tragan's face, looking at his hands, the wall, the ceiling, anything but his face. But she couldn't keep from peeking, out of the corner of her eye. His face was mauve, rippling in an even motion. Was that good, did that mean he was calm? She couldn't tell.

He paused, rolling the knot between his fingers, and then examining the fingers themselves, minutely, before getting back to his knotty work.

"Where are we going?" Sarah asked. She was shaking, and she could see the vibrations being transmitted along the rope to Tragan's hands.

"I do not know," Tragan said.

"Who is Avva?" Sarah half-whispered.

Tragan stopped, standing still with the ropes in his hands like a freeze-frame. Only his hands moved then, tightening the knot and then moving down the rope to the unknotted part. He started drawing the ropes up and coiling them in his fist as he spoke, a little too loudly.

"She is Pilot Avva Omet-J, of the Sast. That is what the universe thinks she is. But I - I know better."

He reached out and took Sarah's averted chin in his hand, turning her face to his face that was suddenly close and ripe with colour, blooming like a poisoned rose. "I know that she is a Goddess. My Goddess. I worship and adore her; I lie here endlessly awaiting the grace of Her voice or Her touch. She is all the universe to me."

Tragan's voice dropped to a near-whisper. "But now I know, I also know, that I have been hostage here for decades, helpless, unable to escape. Her slave and her servant. She has controlled me utterly… I don't even know if you are really here."

He reached out and dreamily pinched Sarah's cheek; she squeaked, but he was more interested in seeing the flush rise on her flesh.

"If only Avva had kept your companions, I could ask them if you were real."

Sarah's ears perked up at that. "So my companions aren't here?" It was a calculated risk to ask, but if they were back with the TARDIS, they could come after her. They would, the Doctor would never leave her at Tragan's mercy.

"Yes. She - threw them outside and ran. It's very strange, that she would do that. Not like her at all. I'd expect her to ferry them somewhere and then charge them an outrageous passenger fee."

Sarah hoped that by 'threw them outside' Tragan didn't mean they had been thrown into deep space. "Maybe if you could reunite me with my companions, we could - both escape?"

Tragan jerked the rope, hard, and Sarah stumbled an unwilling step closer. "Why would I want to escape the embrace of a Goddess?"

"Well, I certainly don't want to divert any of her attention away from you. So the sooner I leave, the sooner you have her all to yourself?" Sarah was really scrambling in the dark now, but being tied up and practically on the leash of an alien sadist can do that.

Tragan stared at the floor. "But now that I can move again, maybe I should do something. Maybe she wants me to run, to escape her. I don't understand." He twisted the rope in his hands like a rosary. "She plays terrible games, you know. More awful than any I could ever dream of. All this could just be another trick. How would I know?"

This was worse than talking to a schizophrenic, thought Sarah. One minute it's all Goddess this and Goddess that, the next he's a prisoner and wants only to escape! She almost, almost, felt sorry for Tragan.

"Why couldn't you move before?" Sarah asked. Whatever Avva had done to Tragan to keep him here, she might also do to a human hostage. She was so glad that the Doctor and K-9 were safe, that she almost missed the import of Tragan's reply.

"I - had no arms or legs."

Sarah cringed so hard she could actually feel the ropes shift all over her body. She pictured Tragan as a maimed torso, like a piece of statuary kept in a niche. "That's ghastly! Inhuman!"

"Precisely," said Tragan dryly. "But now I awaken and I have them back. I can walk, I can touch, I appear to be under no restraints. And you are here. You, Sarah Jane, the little Earth girl who led to my downfall. What a remarkable coincidence - if you really are here. And if you are, then why? What are you here to be? A new toy? A new piece in the game? Or perhaps a replacement for me?"

Tragan's eyes blazed as he and Sarah said the same word in unwitting unison.

"Never!"

 

* * *

 

On the control deck, where neither Tragan nor Sarah could hear, Avva was crying.

She crouched in her command chair, knees to forehead, and wept; her tears left wet marks on her robe. She clutched at herself with both arms, digging her elbows against her ribs, ignoring the scrolling news screens. She had seen enough.

"Nothing, nothing, nothing!" she said in a wet choked voice. "All for nothing!"

Then she stood, and swayed from one foot to the other; the room was too small for her to pace in. Her face a mask of fury, she snarled to herself, "No, it can't be for nothing. I'm not going to lose. I refuse to lose! I am going to find a way. I am going to make this come out right. I will!"

Her lips a tight hard white line, she sat and started tapping at the controls. There were changes that needed to be made, and fast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to "The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage", by Midori, for being invaluable bondage reference material for this chapter. Keep a copy tied to your coffee table!


	5. Gifts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tragan, Avva and Sarah Jane have a discussion.

Tragan led Sarah across the room and had her stand in front of a metal chair, facing him. She stared back at him, loathing him and pitying him all at once. Kneeling at her feet, he lashed the rope back and forth, around her legs and then through the knotted loops and then back around again, weaving a web of rope around her legs. His hands moved so quickly that she was bound from ankles to knees before she realised what he was doing, and when she tried to move her legs she started to lose her balance.

Tragan's left hand caught the loose ropes and his right grabbed the knot over her chest, steadying her. Still holding the knot, he stood and leaned Sarah backwards, seating her in the metal chair. He fussed over her, adjusting a loop of rope here and there, shifting the tension of the binding over her arms. Then he sat at her feet and stared at the control room door in the opposite wall, unmoving as any rock. Waiting.

"Now I need you to squeal for me," he said.

"What?" said Sarah, adjusting her bound arms against the chair back and realizing that because there weren't any ropes over, well, over her arse, she could sit in comfort. More or less.

"I need to search this room, and she must not overhear me. So squeal!"

Sarah writhed inside, this was so - stupid! Undignified! Then Tragan stood in one smooth flex and leaned close, and hissed, "Squeal or I'll give you a motive to s-"

"Eeee!" she shrilled through her teeth, and kept on doing so as Tragan darted to the wall and starting opening drawers and cabinets, quickly scanning the contents, then closing them and moving on. He darted to a wall computer, flicked through various screens, then went to another wall. He moved fast, like a lizard scuttling over a rock. "Eeee!" Sarah squealed again, and wriggled in the chair.

Too hard, the chair started to tilt - and Tragan caught it from behind. But rather than sit her upright, he tilted the chair further backwards; Sarah found herself half-lying on her back, and looking up into Tragan's face.

Tragan leaned close, that cratered face like a hideous moon above her, and said, "Is that the loudest sound you can make?"

"Did you mean scream or squeal?" asked Sarah.

"Ah, a slip of the tongue. My apologies." While Sarah was trying to wrap her mind around Tragan apologizing to anyone for anything, he went on. "I found no weapons. But - the computer calendar is gone. I don't know when we are."

"Neither do I, so could you please put me back?" said Sarah, her voice trembling only a little. Tragan slowly tilted the chair upright.

Sarah waited for him to push it forward and tip her onto her nose, or shake her dizzy, but instead he threw himself to the floor and grovelled as the control room door opened and Avva stepped out.

Sarah swallowed her own little shudder of fear. Who was this tiny scruffy woman that she could take the monster Tragan and make him into her toy? For that matter, what sort of woman would want someone like Tragan as a toy? The idea that she might be slated to be Tragan's replacement has struck a nasty nerve somewhere. She certainly didn't want Avva doing whatever she had done to Tragan to herself.

Avva was still wearing the loose red robe, and her hair still looked like something the cat had slept in. Or spit up. On small bare feet with purple-rimmed nails she walked over to Tragan, and when he crawled to her feet and would have kissed them, she put one foot on his shoulder to stop him and hold him back.

"Tragan. Please get up, stand and face me," she said in a pleasant enough tone.

"Mistress, I dare not, I am unworthy-" and she interrupted.

"I have given you legs to stand on and a face to see out of. I would enjoy the sight of my creation and as fetching as you are from this angle, you are even more fetching standing up. Now stand!"

Tragan stood, slowly, hunching, looking as though he expected a blow to strike him down at any moment. But instead Avva looked at his pulsating face with an expression of satisfaction.

"I'd forgotten how lively your complexion could be when you were feeling emotional," she said, and smiled.

Avva took his arm with a flourish. After a little hesitation, he escorted his Mistress to the bound Sarah, and they stared at each other. Sarah thought she could read this alien's face, and what she looked like under the brash and the smile was a person with a secret. It was nothing definite that she could put a finger on, but just something about the way she looked at Sarah, and away from Tragan, hinted at it. She noticed that Avva smelled almost exactly like a bayberry candle. And that her eyes were just a little bit red.

Avva smiled and turned to touch Tragan's cheek.

"She's lovely.  Thank you." And the Naglon actually pressed himself against her hand like a cat; and like a hungry cat, his eyes followed her. She spoke to Sarah, "You are lovely there, do you know that?"

Sarah gasped in dismay, then found her voice. "Lovely! I've been kidnapped, tied up against my will-"

"But tied with great care," Avva interrupted. "Someone has taken great pains to make sure that your bonds are both confining and pleasing to the eye. The black rope goes well with your hair and eyes, and the green sets off your khaki. I could hang you on the wall with a price tag on your toe and sell you, no problem.

"And there's the intrigue of tying you over your clothes, as well. It makes the viewer wonder, what would Sarah Jane Smith look like bound so, without her clothing? The contrast between the ropes and the clothing is quite the grace note. "

Sarah Jane swallowed, and decided that asking Avva to keep her safe from Tragan might not be a fruitful request.

Avva cleared her throat, and said "Computer, deploy chairs." Avva and Tragan sat on the spindly metal chairs that rose from the floor, paying no attention to their captive in the next chair over. Sarah Jane for her part sat still and looked forward to being overlooked. Hopefully she could remain a fly on - well, a fly on a chair, she didn't really want to be hung on the wall.

"I'm sorry about turning off the calendar function, Tragan, but I thought I should explain what has happened to you, and to us, face to face."

Tragan stared down at his hands, twining between his knees. "I have no right to ask, no-"

"Tragan?"

"Yes, Mistress?"

"There is something you want to ask me, judging from that colour you're turning, and I want to hear you ask it. Out loud, if you please. I still haven't gotten into your mind again."

Tragan rubbed his hands together, then clenched them hard, hard enough that it looked painful. "Is - are these real? Am I real?"

"Yes.  I grew a backup copy of your original body, and had you telepathically linked to it. It's quite an honour really; the technique is reserved for Sast usually. That is really your body, complete with hands and feet and face and everything else."

"I used to be able to - hear you. In my mind. Hear your thoughts; see out of your eyes sometimes. Why can't I now? What's wrong with me?"

"I don't know. Perhaps your neurotransmitter reserves are not fully charged yet. Some deficiency in the nutrient mix I used to grow your second body in the tank."

"You aren't hiding from me?" Tragan looked up. "Hiding your thoughts?"

Avva smiled. "No."

Tragan pressed his hands to his face; his voice was slightly muffled when he said, "And you moved me into this body when I died."

"We died, Tragan. We were on a courier run to pick up an ambassadorial packet as you surely recall. The abduction machine found us en route, dragged us in, and bled off the Flea's power. Then it brought in another ship while still trying to subdue the Flea - careless. Greedy. The other ship exploded, and debris was tearing through the ship - and - "

Tragan interrupted. "Avva - the debris, it caught you, right as you were diving back into the main cabin, I felt it tear you almost in half, I saw through your eyes as it sliced into me and you thought 'Tragan, no!'"

And he repeated to himself, "'Tragan, no!'" He stood up, and then sat back down. "Why? Why would you think that?"

Avva answered slowly. "Tragan, I have spent more time with you than I have with any other living person. You have been a very important part of my life for a long time. I cannot deny that I have become - quite attached to having you here."

She sat straighter. "But I also can't deny that I have gotten far more out of our - little arrangement - than I have given. Even as to giving you back your life; after all, if you had not been with me and unable to dodge, you would not have been endangered. So now, ask me, make that request that you are hiding in that opaque brain of yours."

Tragan looked up, his face white as a cloud, and finally choked, "I want - I want to go. I want to leave you."

Avva's face was twitching, although Sarah couldn't understand just what it meant. "You want your freedom. Are you certain?"

"Yes."

"Well, in recognition of your long and faithful service to me, I will of course grant your request."

Tragan's face started to purple, running towards black, bubbling alarmingly.

"And there will only be the most minor of-"

"Severance fees?" Tragan's voice was as flat as his face was roiling.

"Yes, my sweet. Something symbolic. Let me - let me cut your hair."

Tragan raised one hand and touched the twisted, sticky-looking ropes of hair that still dangled from his head. "Cut my hair? And then what?"

"And then you can leave."

"You aren't going to - cut anything else? Clone another copy of me?"

Avva chuckled. "A clone of you without your mind print would lack your charming personality. And I will not shed one drop of your blood, I swear."

She gestured with one hand in midair; Sarah presumed that was the swearing bit.

"But bear in mind," she continued, "that your fellow Naglons will not take kindly to your years of servitude under me. It might be best if you were - discreet about rejoining society."

"Imprisonment means death for a Naglon. That's what we are always taught to believe. It's our duty to die, to kill ourselves. I can never go home, never be among Naglons again, because if they found out who I was…"

Avva smiled, a bitter smile. "Of course, it probably has not occurred to you that you may have been forgotten. We have after all been in medical suspension for the last eleven years."

Tragan made a gulping noise. "Eleven years?"

"Yes. The Flea lost a lot of power in that fight, and it registered that our mind prints had transferred into the tanks. Fortunately for us the abduction machine had been badly enough damaged that it too was running low on power - too low to take the Flea apart. So my ship diverted all its energies to keeping the tanks sealed and in standby, awaiting more power. And she waited, and waited, and waited. Lucky for us that Miss Smith came along."

"Maybe you could send me a Christmas card," said Sarah. Both Avva and Tragan turned and stared at her, as though a piece of the furniture had spoken. Then they focussed back on each other.

"Eleven years…what has happened?"

"I am not entirely sure," said Avva. "The news protocols don't seem to be able to update." She was lying, Sarah was sure of it, but apparently Tragan wasn't going to call her on it. Or maybe he just couldn't read humanoid faces well enough.

"I also put you in stasis for an additional ten hours just now. So sorry, but I had to clean - the main room. I thought you would find it disturbing to watch."

Tragan shivered, and his face seemed to flatten. "Yes, I would have."

"The bodies are sealed away, Tragan. I won't ask you to handle them."

Bodies? thought Sarah. She had only seen one.

Tragan stared into Avva's pale green-yellow eyes, and asked her, "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why the consideration? I'm your property, the Sast gave me to you, you can order me to do anything you like!"

"I like having you happy."

His mouth fell open, then closed with a snap. "What?"

"Happy, Tragan, happy. While I could have achieved it by drugging you or altering the structure of your brain, I would take no pride in it. I do take great pride in what I have made you into."

Tragan shut his eyes, and spoke with them still closed. "You tore me apart and remade me, you spent thirty years with me under your foot, and now you will just let me go after a haircut? Why?"

"I want to cut your hair because I want to touch you again. It will probably be for the last time. But I suppose you wouldn't understand that."

"I suppose not," said Tragan, staring straight ahead. Sarah wondered if he had noticed that Avva had answered only the last part of the question. He did not move as Avva got a steel comb and what looked like a double-sided straight razor, and a towel, and stood behind him. Pushing back his hood and wrapping him in the towel, she began to cut.

She took her time with his hair; combing it slowly, running her fingers through it. Like petting a cat, thought Sarah. That's what Tragan was to her, a pet. The hair seemed unnaturally stiff near the roots, and Sarah could see how it grew in little clumps out of his head, like the strands of some sea plant. His face throbbed between purple and black; perhaps he was imagining Avva casually slicing off his arms, or his head.

And as Avva cut, she talked.

"I've calculated a jump to the Threm Bazaar, it should be busy now. A good place for our trails to split off." She razored off a long lock of hair, rolled it between two fingers, and moved as though to stuff it in her mouth. Then caught Sarah's incredulous look, and dropped it on the floor instead.

She smirked; Sarah realised that Avva was just joking with her, and glared back. Tragan didn't seem to notice.

"You don't have any current credit standing or accounts open. And wiring a credit transfer to the late Tragan might raise some red flags. But you can have anything you want in the way of trade goods that the Flea is carrying."

"Of course. You want to make sure that I can get a good head start."

Avva frowned, and sliced another strand of hair. "Head start?"

"This is a hunting game you are playing with me, aren't you?" Tragan's eyes opened wide. "See how far I can run before you catch up to me and start punishing me. Or do you think I'll come back to get my hands on Miss Smith, is that it? Is she bait?"

Sarah Jane didn't really want to be bait, but couldn’t think of anything to say.

"Why can't you believe that I am telling the truth? That your freedom is not a game?" She stroked her palm over the top of his head, over his hair, and Sarah Jane saw the truth in that simple caress. Love. It was there, in the way that she touched him, in the look in her eyes. But Tragan - who could tell anything about how he felt from that boiling stew pot of a face?

Avva's face went blank as Tragan tilted his head back and looked up at her; with neat movements she sawed at the locks of hair growing down around his ears as he spoke.

"My freedom, make you happy?"

"Why not? Look at how much making others unhappy pleases you."

Tragan's voice was at its flattest when he replied, "That is something we have in common."

Avva brushed some loose hair off of the towel. "Sometimes. What we do not have in common, Tragan, is empathy. Your attentiveness to my desires used to be close to empathy. But you've changed."

She cupped her palm under Tragan's upthrust chin. "I wonder when it happened? Only a few hours ago, you grovelled at my feet and called me Goddess."

Tragan stared up at her, upside-down above him. "If it would please my Goddess that I should run fast and far, she need only tell me so."

The haircut seemed to be done. Avva put the razor down on the table and cupped both hands around his face.

"Do you want me to bring the dice?"

He froze; even his face froze. "No!" he gasped.

"Then I will tell you what the game is, Tragan." Avva's voice was cold. "The game is Flee to Joy. And the way you win, is if I never see you again."

Avva let go of Tragan and he put his head down, staring straight ahead, seeming not to see anything before him. She walked to the control room and then spoke from the doorway.

"Tragan?"

He hm'd, still in his own thoughts.

"There is a mask in the storage area, filed under T. You will need it."

The control room door closed and Tragan stirred back to life. He picked up the razor and looked at it meditatively, turning it to the light.

"She did say that I could have anything I wanted in the way of trade goods," he said.

 


	6. Pursuit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor is the Naglons' prisoner, and discovers why they are pursuing Avva and Tragan.

The Doctor was watching himself in a crisis situation, that being three very hard-handed Naglons searching his clothes and his person, vacuuming the slightest bit of forensic dust from him with very cold-nozzled machines. How will I react? he wondered.

I seem to be reacting well; light humour, pushing aside their cruelties. Not bad for an old man. He jested with them about their keeping their hands in the freezer overnight to let them exert just the right cold grip on him, and they grinned back.

Unfortunately, he did remember that Naglons don't grin to show happiness: they grin because they are thinking about biting you.

"So, who's on the Righteous Flea that you are looking for?" he asked, trying to ignore the narrow bristly brush currently having its way with his left ear.

The three Naglons looked at each other, then one answered. "A Naglon has been kidnapped by the pilot of the Righteous Flea. Of course he will have chosen honourable death over confinement as soon as possible, but the pilot refuses to return the body to the Naglon for funeral rites. Until his death is confirmed, we are on honour quest."

One of the other Naglons said, whispered actually, "They say that she abused him in intimate ways."

The other two struck the speaker with withering glares, but it was the Doctor who spoke next.

"Forgive me if I am breaking taboos, but isn’t that physically impossible for your species? That is, if by intimate ways you mean-"

The Naglon interrupted. "It is only a rumour. An impossible rumour. Naglons can only mate with other Naglons; it proves our superiority over the mongrel alien-lovers in the Galaxy. Who would believe the babblings of a broody sentient insect, anyway?"

The brush withdrew itself, and then was replaced by a small sponge that dabbed at the Doctor's hair. Finally, he was permitted to pull himself back together and put his shoes back on (very much the worse for wear, they had been partially disassembled and were now mostly held together by the laces). He was led through the hangar area back to the person he had mentally dubbed the Chief Naglon Nabob.

The Nabob snarled at the Doctor's appearance. "The Flea is not here!"

"Yes, but the Flea was here, is what I've been trying to tell you. And besides, if you really believed that the Flea wasn't here, why did you come in bellowing over every channel 'We seek the Righteous Flea'?" asked the Doctor.

"That is our battle cry. It is the Sast and the Righteous Flea who are to blame for our disgrace, our disgrace that can only be washed clean in blood. Sast blood."

"The Sast, aren't they one of those artificial species?"

"They are the accursed soulless spawn of machines and genetic engineering, who influence those who have no morals and no decency. To deal with them is to bite lightning, unholy are their skills, and they dare even travel in -"

One of the other Naglons dared to interrupt the Nabob. "Sir, we scraped the prisoner's clothes, and found shed skin cells on his shoes, analyzed them and -" he pointed to the screen by the Nabob's elbow, where apparently the information was being displayed.

The Nabob turned, and read. He made no noise, but when he turned back his face was almost black, and puffed with rage.

"A Sast was here - an Omet Sast at that! The Omet are the Sast clan most responsible for this war. To capture an Omet, to flay it slowly, to mount its head at the prow of our ship, still alive and screaming - that would be fine sport!"

"The sport will be even finer than that, I think," said another Naglon. He was smiling. They were all smiling. "Keep reading."

The Nabob did, and this time when he turned back his face was so swollen that his eyes were slits.

"Tragan! Tragan's gene print!"

"Tragan? He's dead, isn't he?" said the Doctor. "I'm sure I heard he died on Parakon, or no wait, maybe I was there…"

"That means the Sast is Avva Omet-J! She who abducted the body of our lost brother Tragan, mounting his trophy in her ship to be defiled! If we capture her alive, we shall kill her one cell at a time!"

The Nabob stood, and his hand fell on the Doctor's shoulder, crushingly. "You must come with us. You must witness the glorious suffering and death, so that you can return and tell all of your peoples about it."

The Nabob shouted "We leave!" and the other Naglons started to pack up. The Nabob started marching for the entryway his ship had bashed into the hangar, dragging the Doctor along behind him.

"Wait, I need to take something with me!" complained the Doctor.

The Nabob turned and smiled. "Oh? What?"

"Oh well, my robot, you see K-9 is his name, he was inside the Righteous Flea, he might have recordings of the occupants, surely those would be of use?"

The Naglon looked down on him, the flesh around his eyes starting to subside. "It would, possibly."

"Oh good, we can just scoop him up and bring him then, and his shipping carton, of course," the Doctor said, pointing to the TARDIS.

"Why would you need to bring the robot's shipping carton?" asked the Nabob suspiciously.

"Well, of course he wouldn't be nearly worth as much without the original carton!" said the Doctor. He hoped that this would not make the Nabob think of taking K-9 for himself, but instead he gestured and the Naglon equivalent of a forklift clamped and scooted off with the TARDIS.

K-9 rolled out of hiding and to the Doctor's side. "Master-"

"K-9, stay with me. We need to find Sarah and we need to stay together," he said in a low tone that carried less far than a hissed whisper. "If we can catch up to the Righteous Flea, we can grab Sarah and go."

The Nabob hustled them both into his ship, eager to get going and to get data downloaded from this little robot for voiceprint analysis. At the entry, a soldier still in armour stopped them.

"Sir, per standard procedure the abduction machine's hull has been mined for maximum debris dispersal, and the robots shut down. What should we set the timer for?" asked the soldier.

The Nabob bobbed his chin. "No timer. Set detonation for docking signals, either boarding or departing. Let this illegal ship return to its base and destroy itself there, taking as much with it as it can."

"It will be done," the soldier said, and darted off while the Doctor and K-9 were brought inside. There was a flurry of final preparations, then the Naglons boarded.

With a scream of tearing metal, the Naglon ships backed out of the holes in the hangar bay doors and spun, igniting their drives and driving a wave of sensor waves before them, looking for a tiny ship that must be somewhere out there.

 

* * *

 

Deep in space and silent, a ship heard the Righteous Flea and followed it.

The ship was vast and implacable and black against space. On board, the Sast crew went about their duties. They had been a long time searching for the Flea, and many disputed that it was the ship they were looking for even now. Half of the crew hoped that they would quickly catch the fugitive; half hoped that they never would.

On the main command level, a group of Sast gathered, both in reality and in hologram-projected attendance. Bipedal and many-legged, some solid and some not, they all watched the flickering characters wash over the pyramidal screen in their midst.

"The signal is verified, it is the Righteous Flea," said the ship's Captain.

One of the holographic Sast sighed, and waved three arms. "At last, we can put this dreadful business behind us."

The Captain shook his head. "First we must find this ship, and confirm that it is the Flea, and not another ship using her transponder signal. And if it is Avva, confirm if she still has Tragan with her."

"She would never give him up." That was from one of the co-Pilots. "I met them on the Arx station, when she was first breaking him to her will. He was all she would talk about, the centre of her focus. No, if that is the Flea, it's been sold or stolen. Avva had been in hiding for years, she would never return to civilised space if it meant giving up Tragan."

The displays flickered with new characters.

"How curious. The Righteous Flea's transponder signal has disappeared; and another signal has appeared. Hmm, the Luminous Dhole." The co-Pilot laughed. "That's Avva, all right. She always was a swift hand at transponder resets."

The Captain shot a sharp glance at her. "You sound like you approve of her deception."

The co-Pilot went to make a light answer, and then caught the stares. She paused, and spoke after a moment of thought.

"Avva is Sast, Sast clever. Her personality type was known to sometimes get a little frayed, but when she turned out as extreme as she did, the Hive did not judge to recycle her. No, we kept her alive, because along with her aggressive tastes came strength, came deceptiveness, came a drive for achievement. She achieved great things for herself and for the Race, even at her age. And when we were offered the chance to give her someone who matched her own personality type, we did, even if he was an alien. And surprise, surprise, she locked onto him like gravity."

"Gravity makes things fall." One of the younger Sast Primes was speaking; his quills had not yet grown in all the way, but his voice was already deep with authority. "Avva fell for Tragan, and fell with him, and she has pulled us all down after her."

The co-Pilot gestured agreement. "But still, I would prefer if we were to capture her and bring her to her senses, rather than destroy her out of hand."

"Scan the volume for other ships," ordered the Captain, and they all watched the figures change.

"In the area of space that the Dhole could be in, based on the signal, there is at least one Naglon ship."

"Is the Naglon ship in pursuit?"

"No, but it is running a standard search pattern."

The Captain cleared his throat. "It seems a shame to let them search for nothing. Detach one of the light scout ships and send it on a parallel course. Perhaps the Naglons can be distracted long enough for us to reach in and gather our lost Avva home."


	7. Personal History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tragan discusses his relationship with Avva; the Doctor and the Naglons meet the Sast.

"Where are we going?" Sarah asked Tragan, who rose and went into the next room without answering. Sarah went on talking, hoping he was listening, would pay attention, would see her as a person instead as just a macramé project, which is what she felt like. "What are you going to do to me?"

  
Tragan came back and sat in his chair, then turned a bit and looked at Sarah. He was wearing the pale expressionless humanoid mask that she had seen before, at Space Park on Earth. There he had been a Parakon Corporation executive - and an alien. Now he was just as alien as ever, but his personality…it was changed.

  
He spoke and as he did, his fingers moved under the yellow hood and over his face in a strangely ritual pattern, touching here and there. Making sure the mask fit properly, Sarah guessed.

  
"A parting of the ways. I get off at the Threm Bazaar, and after an appropriate pause Avva chases me. After she catches me, I will be punished."

  
He adjusted one eyelid. "And my punishment will depend on how well I have evaded her, how swiftly she can catch me. And I have to use what trade goods are on hand to fund my flight."

  
"Avva!" Sarah shouted to the closed door. "You can't give me to him!"

  
No reply, and she slumped in her chair. Tragan stared at her, unblinking.

  
"The pursuit will be short if I have to drag a squealing Earth girl behind me every step of the way. I think that our ways will part in the Bazaar as well."

  
Was that good or bad, Sarah wondered. Probably good; anything would be better than Tragan. Wouldn't it? Or she could stay here and - no, Avva was just as creepy as Tragan.

  
He kept talking, apparently to himself now. "If the Threm are still trading with the Orx, I could buy passage here. But I don't know if that's part of the game or not. Am I supposed to run only on foot? Or should I spoil the game by not running, by letting her catch me at once. If I could get to Orx she would never catch me." He paused, and his head drooped. "Never catch me. I would never see her again; she would never touch me again. I would be free. I should want to be free, of course. Everything does."

  
"Tragan," Sarah whispered harshly, and he turned his face to her, his eyes dull. "Hey. I don't know what she's done to you, but you need to get away from her. You need a doctor, or a psychiatrist or whatever Naglons have. You need to be free of her."

  
Tragan kept looking at Sarah. "The Sast gave me to her, you know. I was her reward, I think, or maybe she was my punishment. Or both."

  
"That doesn't make any sense," objected Sarah. But he kept on talking, paying her no heed. "And she .. and she…broke me. Broke me and remade me, me a Naglon, made me into her puppet, her animal. And when she was ready, no, when I was ready. Well. How to explain. You were here in the Flea, before we revived, and saw Avva's - body, yes?"

  
"Yes," said Sarah, wondering where this was going.

  
"And the body was lying on a sort of carpet."

  
"And?" probed Sarah; the remains of the carpet were gone now in fact, but Sarah could see the shallow rim running around the room from where it had lain in its own little tray or floor space. It must have been a very thick carpet.

  
"I was the carpet. I was alive and thinking, with no muscles, no lungs, no heart. My brain was a liquid. I breathed through my skin and my circulation was osmosis. I-"

  
"That's horrible!" interrupted Sarah. "Lying there blind and - or did you peek out through the, the fringes or something?"

  
"No, my only direct sense was touch, and touch was pain. But Avva could let me see through her eyes, hear through her ears, and it could be agony or ecstasy, as she chose."

  
As Tragan continued, Sarah tried to imagine what it would be like to be transformed like that, and failed utterly. "At first it was torture, her every footstep like needles, but more and more often she would let me hear music, taste wine, and it was pleasure. For the last - few years, I presume, it was as though I was always with her. She shared her thoughts; let me see through her eyes. She slept with, well on, me. She even played little games here, let me feel her intimate pleasures, her pain, her fears."

  
Tragan sat and stared, unmoving. Sarah thought he looked like a man in Church, gazing up to the altar. "And when she thought of me, it has always, it seemed to be that, she liked having me here. But of course that can't have been true."

  
"Why?" asked Sarah.

  
Tragan rose and started to pace. "Because I was her slave, her creature. She must have held me in contempt, she must have loathed me, must have hated me utterly to destroy my body and yet keep me alive, keep me literally at her feet for - for decades!"

  
He turned and came up to Sarah, right up to her, and leaned over so that his pale mask was inches from her face. "She must hate me as much as I hate you. I do. I do hate you, it was all, all of it your fault!" His fists clenched at his sides, and the tendons stood out on each side of his neck. "It was your fault that I fell into the Sast's hands in the first place!"

  
Tragan's own hands reached out towards her throat, then paused and fell limply at his sides.

  
"I need to prepare," he said, turning and heading into the side room. The door closed between them, and Sarah was left alone.

  
An attempt to wiggle the metal chair over to where she might be able to get at the razor, still sitting temptingly on the table, met with no success; the chair must be raised up and down from the floor like the others. Bolted down, which actually made sense for spaceship furniture. But she couldn't stand either; some bight of rope behind her was holding her in place.

  
"There's never a sonic screwdriver around when you need one," she muttered to herself.

  
* * *

 

  
The Naglon Nabob did indeed want the download from K-9 of what had happened inside the Righteous Flea, but strangely enough, he insisted on capturing and reviewing the data in his own private quarters, which with both a robot dog and the Doctor inside were distressingly crowded.

  
Distressing was the word: this Naglon was obviously a sports enthusiast, and the walls were crowded with various sorts of rackets, mallets, hooks, trophies, and a few mounted heads which the Doctor hoped were not sentient species.

  
It gave him the creeps. It made him feel awful, he wanted to get out of here, go find Sarah and just leave. Worst of all was that ugly part of him that said he should just leave - and not try to find Sarah.

  
"The abduction machine was broadcasting the distress signal of the Righteous Flea - but that does not prove it had the Flea in its power," growled the Nabob.

  
"Why would it broadcast the signal without having the ship?" asked the Doctor, genuinely puzzled. His hands moved to connect K-9 to the room's display system with clunky purple Naglon cables.

  
"So that they could collect ransom, of course," snorted the Nabob. "Even if they never had, or no longer had, their victim."

  
K-9 announced that he was ready to show his recordings, and all three of them watched.

  
The point of view was low to the floor of course, just like K-9. The Doctor and Sarah Jane's pants legs showed in the corners of the display, then walked across the dim floor and around the corpse.

  
The Nabob gave a little shriek at the sight of the corpse. "That is it! It is here! Within this sector of space!"

  
"K-9, please pause." The recording stopped, and the Doctor turned and looked at the flushed Naglon.

  
"Are you sure? That's Tragan there? I thought that a Naglon skeleton would be more non-humanoid."

  
"No, not the skeleton, that!" The Naglon pointed at the corpse, the corpse and the dried leather rug it was lying on.

  
The Doctor swallowed. "The rug? The rug is Tragan's skin?"

  
"He was imprisoned. He escaped and was recaptured by the Sast, who claimed to have a contract," the Naglon coughed deep in his throat, "a contract for his confinement. But the Parakon Corporation refused to confirm it. When we asked for his body, they said that he had died under torture and his body had been destroyed. But not all of it, it seems."

  
"A skin culture. Ghastly!" commented the Doctor, who of course had no idea of how ghastly it had really been.

  
They returned their attention to K-9's recording; the Doctor and Sarah Jane stepped into the side rooms, and there was a BLOOP! noise.

  
"Stasis field activation, very clever," said the Doctor to himself. He watched even more closely now, because of course he hadn't seen this part.

  
K-9's calculations flashed over the screen; then he turned and saw the tiny metal robots entering the Flea. After one of them nipped a beam at Sarah, K-9 blasted it, and started clearing the ramp of robots.

  
The display split in two; half showed the oncoming robots being mowed down in rows, and the other half showed two metal tanks rising out of the floor of the Flea, ripping though the carpet and sending the corpse tumbling.

  
"Passengers in suspension. If there are passengers of the Sast they are equally damned. Ha!" barked the Nabob, as one of the tanks opened and something inside started crawling out, "freeze display!"

  
The picture was of a bare midriff, illuminated in the square of light from the door. Purple stripes fanned down it, slanting in a V-pattern.

  
"Excellent, the passengers are Sast as well!" gloated the Naglon. "They are very sensitive to pain, the Sast. Great sport under the knife."

  
The Doctor cringed and looked around the room. Was there anything he could do to get out of here and back to the TARDIS?

  
The replay continued, and suddenly they were flying, as K-9 was swept up and thrown out of the doorway of the ship.

  
"Disappointing. I would have liked confirmation of both passengers' species," grumped the Nabob.

  
"There is a secondary recording," said K-9. The picture jumped, to a shot of the Flea's green door from the outside. The door opened, and a voice shouted, "We offer one biological, one robot and one travel machine in payment! Final offer!" and the Doctor came hurtling through the doorway, head over heels.

  
"The Sast must be pretty strong to chuck me about like that," said the Doctor.

  
"Negative. Audio analysis and trajectory indicates that the person who threw the Master is not the same as the person who spoke," said K-9. "Female speaker is the person who ejected K-9 from the ship. Occupant of the other suspension tank is unknown, but appeared to be in distress. Second tank occupant must have recovered quickly to have thrown the Master out with such force."

  
"No matter, no matter." The Nabob stood and paced back and forth, face creeping with excitement. "Two to slay, then I return to Naglon with the body of our lost brother, to reward, fabulous reward! I will be the Naglon who ended the war with the Sast! I shall have glory and power above all of my rank!"

  
"Look, isn't it possible that the passengers have nothing to do with this Sast and her, um, trophy?" asked the Doctor. "Can't you just gather up the bits and go? And let me go as well? I mean I've shown you the recording-"

  
The Nabob took a double-bladed hook from the wall and eyed it, admiring the way the light gleamed on its wicked curves. "I-" But he was interrupted.

  
"Sast scout ship detected forty units out!" snapped a voice from one of the cabin's speakers.

  
"Prepare pursuit course!" shouted the Nabob, hanging the hook back on the wall and dashing out the door - and leaving the Doctor and K-9 alone inside.

  
Immediately, the Doctor went to K-9 and asked him, "K-9, can you tap into the Naglon computers from here?" His hand indicated the bundles of cables still hooked into K-9's side.

  
"Testing…testing…Negative. I can only access internal displays within this ship and display them for the Master."

  
"Do it, K-9. See if you can find their control room."

  
They both watched as a blur of identical corridors and steel rooms stopped on the Nabob, sitting in an elaborate pedestal and surrounded by view screens and other Naglons. The Nabob pointed at one screen and grated, "It is within firing range. Destroy the Sast!"

  
"No!" said the Doctor, knowing that no one would hear him. The screens around the Nabob flared - and then there was a flickering blur, inside the room.

  
The Naglon control deck was suddenly full of people: people wearing featureless white armour and carrying long white staffs. They had materialised out of thin air onto the control deck, and there seemed to be more of them than there were Naglons. In a single coordinated motion, the staffs lashed out, striking the Naglons on heads and shoulders, sending them twitching and collapsing; the staffs must be charged somehow, because after a single blow the Naglons would fall. Two of the white figures focused on the Nabob, and he went down roaring after multiple blows.

  
"Well, they're down. Now what?" said one of the white figures, voice filtered to a harsh blur by the armour.

  
One of the other white figures answered. "The rest of the crew was in group quarters, the second squad will have taken them out. Well, the usual punishment I guess. Kick them around a bit; let them feel like they put up a fight. Otherwise they'll sulk. Leave a few marks - but no abdominal blows, understood?"

  
The armoured figures nodded their heads or bobbed free hands. "Good. Search the ship for any non-Naglon prisoners."

  
"That would be us, K-9," said the Doctor. "Let's hope these Sast are more sensible than Naglons."

  
"Why do you identify these as Sast, Master?" asked K-9.

  
"Well, it seems to make sense. They fire on a Sast ship and are immediately boarded and overcome. K-9, can you find the TARDIS?"

  
The viewscreen flickered again; white figures moving through corridors, limp Naglons draped over bunks and chairs, and then - the TARDIS!

  
She was sitting in a crowded storeroom full of other machinery, and the Doctor's eyes drank in the sight of her. If he could just get to the TARDIS he could - no.

  
The Doctor clenched his own hair hard enough to hurt at the roots. No, he couldn't leave. He couldn't leave Sarah Jane out there, in the hands of aliens, with the Naglons of all creatures chasing after her.

  
His betraying mouth opened, asked K-9, "Can you indicate the path to-" but then the door to the cabin slid open, and the Doctor turned.

  
The three figures that entered were sleek and sexless in their white armour. Two stood in the doorway while the third stepped towards the Doctor, long white staff held at an angle.

  
The Doctor smiled and held out his empty hands. "Hello, I'm the Doctor. Are you Sast, by any chance?"

  
The white figure stopped, and nodded.

  
"Do you know a Sast named Avva Omet-J, by any chance? Whose ship is the Righteous Flea?"

  
The figure stiffened, and nodded more urgently.

  
"I have a friend on board the Righteous Flea that I am very anxious to be reunited with."

  
"Is your friend Naglon?" asked the Sast, in that machine filtered voice that sounded like sandpaper on steel wool.

  
"Er no, actually, she's human. A very nice lady named Sarah Jane Smith, and I seem to have left her in a rather bad way. And so, well, I thought that perhaps we could be of assistance to each other."

  
"Perhaps we could," said the Sast. "The Naglons have a transmat system that we have tapped into. We could discuss this aboard our own ship, the Thundering Hypocrisy. Over refreshments."

  
"Refreshments." The Doctor actually beamed, as his hands went to unhook the cables still fastened into K-9. "That would be…would be…"

  
His hands were fumbling on the cables. There was a smell of burning amber in the air, scorching in his nose, and his hands shook. The Doctor leaned one hand on the table, and the rest of him started to shake.

  
"Are you in medical distress?" asked the Sast. He removed his helmet, letting his long blond hair loose over his shoulders, and the Doctor noted that there was a stylised red flower painted on the armour plate just there, where the hair fell.

  
Rose.

  
"I, I rather think I am," said the Doctor, as he slid to the floor.

  
"Rose!" he howled, falling, falling. "What have I done to you?"

  
K-9 spun atop the table and faced the Sast who had come forward, bending to pick the Doctor up.

  
"Robot, is this man-"

  
K-9 interrupted. "This unit's name is K-9. The Doctor is in regenerative shock. He must be cared for."

  
"Regenerative shock…I am unfamiliar with it. There is access to more medical information and equipment on our ship. Will you come with us, if we take him back to the Hypocrisy for care?"

  
"Yes," said K-9, and allowed himself to be lifted to the floor. He followed as the Sast led the stumbling Time Lord to a transmat station, and positioned himself at his Master's feet as they all faded away.


	8. Late Night Conversations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah Jane and Avva have a discussion about relationships.

Sarah Jane had expected to wake up on the ceiling.

That is where her two abductors had stashed her the 'night' before, by strapping something Avva called a 'gravity plane' to her back and tossing her straight up; it left her hanging with her bound arms just brushing the ceiling, apparently weightless. And no matter how she struggled, she couldn't get OFF the ceiling.

This was after they had fed her (water and gruel), and introduced her to the unpleasant attentions of the multi-species variable-gravity personal waste-recycling unit. Avva had floated her in with the gravity plane, then undid Sarah's belt and turned around. The toilet did the rest. By itself. With enthusiasm. It didn't even need to untie her.

For once, the threat of "or we'll lock you in the lav overnight" seemed a true threat.

But instead, Sarah woke up in a bed. It was rather narrow, and the faint smell of bayberries made her think it was Avva's. She sat up; found that the binding was loose and falling off her in great loops. She could shrug it off her shoulders and then peel it off down her legs. She couldn't quite decode its tangles, but it seemed that the central loop around her neck had been undone.

By Avva? By Tragan? Sarah Jane stepped quietly to the door, past a shattered empty metal frame on the wall - modern art she presumed - and listened. She heard nothing. She touched the control, and the door opened.

The main room was very dim. Sarah stepped out, went a few paces to her left, and opened the door to what Avva had called the 'control room.'

Ten seconds of staring at the banks of identical, unlabeled buttons and foot pedals (and buttons on foot pedals) convinced Sarah that there was no point in touching anything. She had no idea where there might be a radio in this mess. What she really wanted was a large button labelled 'REVERSE COURSE' but that wasn't here either.

Well, what could she do?

Find a weapon, threaten them and make them take her back to the ship where she and the Doctor had been, where the Doctor presumably was? He might not have any way of tracing the Flea through space; he must be frantic by now! She didn't think that would work though; she didn't know how their weapons worked or where they were, and both Tragan and Avva seemed lethal in their own right.

I've got to get out of here! she told herself. Or, hmm. Maybe lock herself in one of the rooms? This ship wasn't much bigger than a standard flat, there was nowhere to hide and not be found at once. Escape once they landed but before Tragan could - do whatever he was going to do to her.

She opened the door again, stepped back into the main room. And froze.

There was a long low shape lying on the floor. From the end of the shape closest to her, a pale oval glimmered, with deep sockets that seemed to stare at her.

A flat voice whispered, "Computer, half lights," and the overhead lights grew somewhat brighter.

The long low shape was Avva; she was lying on the floor, her head pillowed on her arms and facing Sarah. She had changed out of her shapeless red robe into a blue shift that left her arms bare; her hair was cut short now, lying ragged over her forehead. Without opening her eyes, she murmured, "I trust you did not find my bed too aromatic for your tastes, Miss Smith."

Sarah came a little bit closer, but not too close. She looked at Avva. The alien woman was lying on the cold metal flooring as though it was the softest bed.

"No, actually. Thanks, I mean, for the bed. You actually smell, well, like an Earth plant. A bayberry." Sarah's eyes searched the dim room. She lowered her voice and said, "Where's Tragan? I thought you would be-" and then paused.

"Sharing his bed? Ah, Naglons are more different from you humans than you imagine. Barely humanoid, actually."

Avva rolled onto her back, and her arms reached out, smoothing her hands back and forth across the bare metal floor. "I'm actually used to sleeping out here."

"On Tragan, you mean. After you turned him into a rug," said Sarah, with contempt she couldn't hide colouring her voice.

Avva smiled. "He made the most fabulous rug. Every time you touched him, his colours changed. Beautiful waves of mauve and pink and purple and white, rippling back and forth across his surface. Ah, if he was only here now, Miss Smith. I'd invite you to take off all your clothes and have a nice roll on him, he would turn the most amazing shade of-"

"No thank you!" interrupted Sarah.

"The texture of his skin, like throbbing hot velvet-"

"Ick!" said Sarah.

Avva turned her head and opened one eye a slit. "Ick?"

"I mean, maybe he made smashing interior décor. But he's a monster. A murdering evil monster! Why would you want him around? Or rather, underfoot."

"Well, as interior décor he was a singularly helpless monster. What was he going to do, shake his fringe at me?"

"Fringe?"

"Yes, his hair grew out in a fringe all around the edges. I used to run it through my toes while I ate, tug at it, listen to his mind as he wondered what I was planning to do to him." Avva wiggled her own bare toes against the metal floor as though in demonstration.

"Why hin?" asked Sarah. "I mean, you broke him out of prison, and he tried to renege on your agreement, so you kept him hostage? Literally under your feet! Why? What did he do, what could anyone do, to deserve that?!"

"Miss Smith, he killed me."

Sarah Jane gulped. But of course, if these Sast had backup bodies and moved from one to the other, she could have done that.

"He killed me slowly and with great attention to detail, and when I had the chance I did not do to him a tenth of what he did to me. Of course, some things I did to him would have had no effect on me, and vice versa. He hated to be watched when he suffered, for example. And he didn't like egg hosting either."

Avva put her hands behind her head and opened her eyes, staring up at the ceiling. "But he was so fine and fierce and devastatingly asymmetrical, and he fought so splendidly! And he's the only person I've ever met who would watch the films of Haeyseus Frahnkow with me. We were so alike, so very alike! All I wanted to do was grab him and hold him and never let him go." She sighed, deep in her chest. "And now all I can do is let him go."

"You shouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because he's crazy, you've broken his mind! It's, it's," Sarah searched for the right word, but could only come up with the cliché, "it's not fair! To break him and make him a slave, then let him loose and hunt him down. Even to do it to someone like him. It's cruel."

Sarah inched closer, and then sat on the floor with her arms around her knees. "And there's something else, something you aren't saying. What happened while you were in suspension?"

Without turning her head, Avva slithered closer to Sarah on her back, her body twisting serpent-like to move her along. Before Sarah could move away, Avva's head was at her feet, and she was staring with cold pale eyes at her.

"Nothing happens in suspension, Miss Smith. No sleeping, no dreams. But after I came out of it, I realised that I have taken enough from Tragan. I had dreamed of having him for the rest of his life, our lives, but I realised he was not worth the effort. Really, there are limits to the entertainment one can get out of a carpet. So I thought, what a fine new game it would be to give him back his body and see him scurry away like a little insect!"

Avva's voice had gone from wistful solemnity to snickering cruelty with no explanation. She sounded like she was talking for an audience. Or as though she was expecting to be overheard. Without moving her head, Sarah looked across the room - and saw one of the side doors half-open, and a figure standing there. Eyes flashed bright in the gloom for an instant like an animal's.

Sarah wondered how long Tragan had been listening, but Avva was still rattling on.

"It's nothing that he wouldn't have done to me, after all. Or to you. Or your companion, the Doctor. Ah, I am glad that we did not come across him!"

"Why?" said Sarah, still watching Tragan watching them.

"I studied Tragan's background very carefully before collecting him. It took considerable fact checking, but when Tragan took off with you on board, the Doctor came to save you - and arrived on Parakon before Tragan even went into warp. There was no way he could have had time to do that unless he actually moved backwards in time during his trip."

Avva's eyes flared wide, although she had still not looked at Tragan. "Time travel. Dangerous, tricky business. Anyone who would travel in time for such a trifle as one little Earth girl life would be a formidable foe, and I certainly don't want them coming after me! No, let Tragan take you. If the Doctor comes, he will follow him instead of me, that's what matters. I certainly don't care what the Doctor might do to Tragan."

Sarah leaned over the smaller woman and whispered one word, "Liar."

Avva's face went rigid, and out of the corner of her eye Sarah Jane could see Tragan moving out of the doorway, towards them. She spoke fast, "You lie when you say you don't care what happens to him, because you do care, you care-"

Sarah was yanked to her toes by the front of her jacket, held face to face with Tragan's boiling face, literally black with rage.

"How dare you call my Avva a liar! How dare you!" he seethed.

"Your Avva?" said Avva, rising to her feet and staring up at the two of them. Tragan actually ignored her, his attention locked on Sarah who was squirming free of her jacket. Trying to get his attention, Avva reached out a hand to Tragan's convulsing face, and he bit her.

And they all froze: Sarah with her toes barely touching the floor and one shoulder out of her jacket, Tragan with his white teeth sunk into the flesh of Avva's palm, and Avva, her facial stripes flushing from black to pink to purple, and red blood starting to ooze down her wrist and drip on the floor between them. It was so silent that Sarah could hear the drops hit, one, two, three, and then Tragan opened his jaw, just a little. Avva pulled her hand loose, but held it in front of Tragan as though to display the wound, the marks his teeth had left.

Slowly, he lowered Sarah to her feet, and then lowered himself, to the floor, forehead to knees and his arms over his head. He shivered, all over, like a frightened animal.

Avva didn't say anything. Stepping carefully around the little drops of blood, she went into the control room; when she came out, her bloodied hand was closed around something, something small. She knelt by Tragan's head and held out her fist, and he whined, low in his throat.

Sarah was remembering going on an interview in farming country, and being frightened by a vicious dog; and being even more frightened when the dog's kindly-looking owner administered a cruel beating to the animal in front of her, gently smiling all the while. Avva was smiling, as she looked down at Tragan.

Then she looked up at Sarah, and for one moment her eyes were full of misery - or was Sarah just unable to read her face? Her facial stripes weren't purple anymore, they were all pink and goose-skinned.

"Tragan, you have to roll. You know the rules, you roll the dice and you choose your own punishment," she cajoled the Naglon. "You don't have to look up, I have the list of punishments right here," and she flourished a folded slip of paper in her other hand. "But you do have to roll."

"No," he groaned, "please, I'm sorry, you frightened me, I won't do it, I'll never do it again!"

"It might not be a bad punishment. Maybe I’ll just start you on our little chase with a tiny handicap. Like, say, only one eye." Avva's voice was sickly-smooth.

Sarah was remembering that dog again when she stepped forward and said, "Stop it, Avva. He's mad, he doesn't know what he's doing."

Tragan's shivering stopped, and Avva turned to look up at Sarah Jane, her eyes suddenly as hard as ice. Her stripes were still pale pink.

"This is none of your business-"

"It's not his fault-"

"Oh really? Perhaps the fault is yours then. Will you roll?" Avva held open her hand and showed two tiny dice, one black and one white, on her blood-sticky palm. "Will you roll and take the punishment in his place?"

Without thinking of what she was doing, Sarah snatched the dice up from Avva's hand and flung them down on the floor, hard. One bounced over the deck, the other hopped and slid under Tragan's cowl where it touched the floor.

The Sast women leaned over, on one hand, and read the die that had fallen to one side. "Seven. And the other is? Tragan?"

He lifted his head a fraction, just enough to let light under the hood, and said, "Two." And then dropped his head and hood back to the floor.

Avva opened the folded slip of paper. She looked at it, then at Sarah. Then she looked down at Tragan.

"Tragan, there's no reason why you should have to witness this. I will be in my cabin with Miss Smith, and I may be some time. Please clean up where I've leaked on the deck out here, there's a friction cloth under the blue cabinet."

Avva rose and took Sarah's elbow, and they moved together, Sarah gritting her teeth and wondering what Avva was going to do. But she couldn't stand the thought of damned, mad Tragan being hurt. They were at the door to Avva's cabin when he asked, hesitantly, "What are you going to do to her?"

Avva replied without turning. "What I would have done to you - of course."

The door closed behind them, and Sarah Jane was alone with Avva.

Sarah's first thought was to get her back to a wall, but Avva was paying no attention to her; instead she rummaged through a drawer, pulled out a little box, and started to wrap a long red bandage around her bitten hand. She looked up at Sarah, and paused to pick up the scrap of paper from the bed where she had dropped it and hold it out.

Sarah grabbed the paper and retreated back to the wall before she looked at it. "This is blank."

"Really? Well then, I shall do to you exactly what it says there - nothing."

Sarah crumpled the paper in her hand, aghast at how cruel the alien could actually be. "You! To torture him like that!"

"The only torture is what he imagined I might do to him. As far as real damage goes, he is the one who bit me, after all. But I do salute you," Avva gestured to her forehead with three fingers, "for rolling the dice in his place. That was very brave of you." She finished wrapping the bandage, which clung to itself around her hand. "Not something that I could do, if it was Tragan holding out the dice."

Sarah's back was still against the wall. She wasn't certain that Avva was serious. "So you aren't going to hurt me?"

"Of course not. Actually this is probably more punishment for Tragan than you imagine; he loves being the centre of attention, even painful attention. Pain and pleasure - that's the way it's always been between Tragan and me." A sigh. "Always."

"Do you know how many people he's killed?" asked Sarah. Maybe the alien woman didn't realise exactly what sort of person she was keeping underfoot.

"Exactly? No, because he did get rather wild at some of those parties with Chairman Freeth, and it's hard to say who struck the final fatal blow in the mash-up. Or are you thinking of Waldo Rudley?"

Sarah's neck tensed at the name. She'd know Rudley only for a short time, on Parakon, but his goodness and decency had been in stark contrast to the rest of his decadent culture. She'd been - very fond of him. And yet she hadn't thought of him in years, and she cursed herself for that.

But Avva was going on, "Never punch a Naglon male in the abdomen unless you are planning to kill him at once, Miss Smith. It is - it has the potential to be profoundly damaging to them. Mr. Rudley must have had a long stride indeed, that Tragan did not simply pounce on him and tear him apart on the spot."

"That doesn't excuse anything!"

"No. It is a reason, not an excuse." Avva looked at Sarah speculatively, and Sarah tried to make her forget whatever she was speculating by asking hastily, "Can you understand what it means when Tragan's face changes colour?"

"Oh yes." The Sast woman smiled to herself.

"And what does it mean when your face stripes go all pink and bumpy like now?" asked Sarah. Avva immediately put her hands to her face and started rubbing, like someone trying to rub a knot out of their forehead. Her voice was a bit muffled when she said, "It means - fear. Or unhappiness."

"But that's how you looked when Tragan was grovelling at your feet. And I don't think you were afraid of him. Were you unhappy?"

Avva dropped her hands and closed her eyes in concentration; the stripes across her face flushed back to their normal purple. Her eyes snapped open. "Now why should I be unhappy at the sight of Tragan grovelling his lovely self at my feet?"

"Because you don't like to see his lovely self so miserable and terrified maybe?" Sarah guessed.

Avva shivered. "Journalists." She cocked her head. "I don't suppose you could scream for me?"

Sarah folded her arms defiantly. "You're right, I don't suppose I could."

"Pity. But I suppose the dead silence coming out of the cabin will work on Tragan's nerves just as well. And anyway, he started it."

"Started what? The biting?"

"No, he started the little game with the dice. Had me tied down on the main table out there," Avva pointed, "and took me apart one bit at a time, according to how the dice fell. A very nasty game, wouldn't you agree?"

"And you keep playing the game. Like an old married couple." Sarah didn't know why she'd used that analogy, but Avva's pained expression suggested that her words had been harsher than she'd thought.

Moving stiffly, Avva opened the door and said, "Tragan, I'm finished with her. Get some ropes, if you please."

From his position on the spotless floor, Tragan looked up, and then smoothly rose to his feet, with a most disconcerting rippling to his face. His eyes flicked over Sarah, head to toe, looking for marks she presumed.

Sarah sighed and folded her arms behind her back. "Here we go again."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Avva is a film collector, including Earth media, and Haeyseus Frahnkow is better known as Jess Franco.


	9. Lost, Found and For Sale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor has been found by the Sast, but he's on the brink of losing his mind; Sarah Jane is headed for the auction block.

"What's wrong with him?" asked the Sast Captain as the alien in the striped clothing was brought, almost dragged, out of the transmat station. "Torture?"

  
"It looks like personality fragmentation, but-"

  
A small robot rolled off the transmat pad. "Regenerative shock."

  
"Does his species' regeneration include personality change?" asked the Captain.

  
"Affirmative."

  
"Get a telepath then, and one of our Doctors. Take him to - no, not the sickbay, not if the telepath will be with him. Take him to Left Oblique. Where's the Naglon Head-Fist?"

  
"Still on his ship, stunned."

  
"Take him off, and three other ranking crew. Take them and bind them, the telepath can work with them when he's done with this one. And hurry! Personality fragmentation can be irreversible."

  
They departed on their various ways at a run, and K-9 rolled to keep up with the two who half-carried the mumbling Doctor down a corridor to Left Oblique. One of the Doctor's mangled shoes slipped off his fumbling feet, and K-9 dutifully pushed it in front of him, like a tugboat pushing a very tiny barge ahead of it.

  
Back aboard the Naglon ship, two of the Sast were searching for the second in command. He had not been on the deck, nor had he been in quarters. Where was he? Hiding? Or was he dead or demoted or just on vacation?

  
Searching, they came to a storeroom, where a tall blue box caught their attention. After their instruments had addressed it, the TARDIS had all of their attention and to spare.

  
* * *

 

  
After Sarah was tied again (at least this time her legs were left free) and the ship was landed, with a bang and a clang and several creaks, everything happened at once.

  
Tragan came into the main room, dressed in an odd mishmash of clothing: brown long jacket, white robe, a heavy belt studded with pouches and heavy leather gloves. Avva was rubbing some white stuff on her cheeks that made her purple stripes fade almost into invisibility. She handed Tragan a small metal card, which he tucked into one of the pouches. A gasping, protesting Sarah was yanked from her chair and shoved to the door, and she finally dug in her heels and said, "Stop! I won't go!"

  
Tragan dragged her backwards, against his chest. He hissed in her ear, "If you act like an untrainable animal, I will sell you for meat."

  
Sarah froze. She was still frozen when Avva came to the door and stood before them, with Sarah between them. She touched him, softly, on the back of one wrist, even while her other hand rose to wag an angry finger at him. "Remember, Tragan. Flee to Joy. The chase starts soon."

  
Without a word, he opened the door and shoved Sarah out, into the cold and smells and spiralling noises of the Threm Bazaar.

  
After the door closed, Avva spun, and dashed for the control room and the computer controls. She ordered the computer, "Outgoing video and audio filters on. Open the channel," she stopped and coughed, and then continued in a rougher voice, "open the channel to the Naglons."

  
"You can't do this to me!" Sarah half-shouted to Tragan, who was propelling her through the crowd by her bound wrists. The crowd was feathered and clawed and tentacled, skipping and walking and rolling between endless rows of booths and wagons and shops, all of it hung over with tiny glowing lights and great flaming spheres and things that trailed perfume and might or might not be alive. It was a country fair via Hieronymus Bosch with a fistful of Flash Gordon thrown in for good measure. If she had been with the Doctor, the alien sights and sounds around her would have enthralled Sarah; instead all she could think of what was waiting ahead for her.

  
"Oh yes I can," said Tragan's expressionless voice. "Left here."

  
Sarah stumbled over she did not know what - it twittered and ran as she stepped on it - and she retorted, "You can check you know! You can find out what's really happening now."

  
Tragan looked at her. "What do you mean?"

  
"Oh come on, even I could tell that she was hiding something about what's happened while you've been frozen or petrified or whatever you want to call it! Maybe there's a warrant out for her arrest, and she wants you safely away before they come for her."

  
Tragan didn't reply, but he did take Sarah by the ropes and tow her into an upright metal booth that somehow reminded her of a phone box. Or a police call box. If only. Whatever it was, it had a screen and a keyboard, and it was small enough that Tragan had to stand unpleasantly close behind her as he waved the card at the screen and spoke.

  
"Computer. Last standard year, all articles, keywords Sast, Naglon, most commonly referenced secondary keywords, top eight read aloud."

  
An unnaturally smooth and flat voice responded from the computer, even as alien characters scrolled up the screen. "Keywords are: war, trophy, embargo, Tragan, Avva, conflict, negotiation, bounty."

  
Sarah's mind tripped over the words Tragan and Avva in that list. Obviously they were not out of the news.

  
Tragan ordered, "Computer, last standard month, all articles, keywords Avva, Tragan, war, bounty, read most frequently referenced article aloud."

  
The computer answered, "Article dated eleven standard days in the past. The Naglon bounty for proof of the death of Sast rebel Avva Omet-J has been doubled, along with the reward for the recovery of her victim Tragan the Naglon. Sentients across the galaxy are scrambling to locate the prize that will not only make them rich, but also end a war that has had severe economic impact on several sectors of the galactic economy. The-"

  
"Computer, end reading." Tragan breathed heavily. "A bounty. Of course. She's going to sell - damn her!"

  
"What?"

  
"She has a dead body, her own dead body, and mine as well! She's going to turn them in and claim the reward and then vanish off into space." He pointed over Sarah's shoulder at the screen. "Look at that reward - times two, it's the fortune of a lifetime."

  
Sarah frowned; she couldn't read the screen. She asked, "Then why not just hide you somewhere, in stasis even, and then come get you after she's collected the payment?"

  
"Because she's tired of me, obviously. So she's going to take the money and run. She'll be well away before I can reveal her treachery. But - no."

  
Tragan bent his head, and Sarah thought she could sense his thoughts racing behind the mask. He went on slowly, "If I reveal that I am alive, I will be executed by the Naglons, for allowing myself to be held hostage. So I can't reveal that I am alive, or that she is alive. So. She turns in the bodies, and claims the reward. The Sast war ends. She can just forget all about me."

  
"You're a fool, Tragan, if you think that."

  
Tragan leaned close and whispered in Sarah's ear, "Why?"

  
"If she wants to forget about you, if she doesn't care what happens to you, why not just kill you, then? Turn in your real dead body? Why would she let you live and even free you when you could give an anonymous tip that she was alive?"

  
"I - do not know."

  
Sarah Jane sighed in frustration. Men! Or maybe in Tragan's case it should be Things! "Because she cares, you idiot. I don't know what she's planning, but I'd bet my life that she loves you. This isn't a chase to destroy you, it's not punishment. Maybe she's planning some romantic abduction in the future; show up on a horse in shining armour-" Although fetching a horse out here would be quite the task.

  
Tragan was breathing unevenly, his chest hitching against Sarah's back. "No, I…she has left me, no. I have left her. I am the one in charge now."

  
"Then why are you still playing her game?"

  
Tragan didn't say anything; he just dragged her out of the booth and propelled her through the bazaar again. She kept talking, trying to get through to him.

  
"Why don't you just call her right now, call the ship? I bet she'll answer you. I'll bet she'll tell you if you only ask her!"

  
Sarah gasped as a hand grabbing her hair stopped her; a feathered face was pressed close to hers and a whistling filled her ears. Tragan snapped "Off!" and the feathered alien retreated. She took the opportunity to turn though, and face Tragan.

  
"I bet you love her too!"

  
Tragan touched her chin with one finger and she flinched. "Perceptive. You must have been a good journalist. I am sorry that I couldn't arrange a better fate for you, but perhaps the Doctor will hunt you up and rescue you again, yes?"

  
Yes, Sarah told herself, yes, he will come, yes, he will find me, yes. That thought sustained her until she was on the auction block, and she looked out at the sea of alien faces - and screamed at the top of her lungs.

  
The auctioneer had goosed her.

  
The bidding started fast then. There was always a good market for screamers.

 

  
* * *

 

  
He was walking through a golden city.

  
It was a city dusted with light, with swooping arches and long drowsy streets; with towering minarets and gardens lush with fruiting trees. Tiny courtyards with fountains that sent cool sprays of water through the air, and golden flowers around those fountains nodding in the breeze. The air was warm, the sun was bright, and he drifted down the sidewalks, revelling in the city.

  
He was alone, he thought. But that seemed proper somehow; it seemed right that he was the only person in this golden city. He turned a corner, and admired a particularly lovely building ahead of him, all stately pillars and wide inviting steps, and saw that it was on fire.

  
He came forward a few steps, horrified. He could not smell smoke, could not see flames, but the golden building was dissolving, was falling apart, running into dust before his eyes. The great dome of it sank like a deflating balloon, and then fell. As silent as snowfall it fell, and the golden dust of it billowed around him and then lay still.

  
What had happened? What was happening?

  
He began to run, and all around him he saw the halls and streets of the golden city start to brighten, to dissolve, to fade away to nothing. It was some nightmare; every time his eyes saw some new sight of beauty it began to burn itself away.

  
His footsteps suddenly were half their speed; he laboured through the dusty air like it was honey, then like stone. Running didn't seem to be working anymore, so he stopped, and had to force his raised foot down onto the worn tan cobblestones.

  
There was the sudden sensation of someone behind him, and then a hand touched his arm. He could not turn his head in the honey-thick air, but could see out of the corner of his eye the hand, pale-skinned and wrinkled, the hand of an old man.

  
A warm soft voice whispered inside his head, "Hello. My name is Doctor Pri Omet-J. Are you the Doctor?"

  
Was he?

  
He decided that he was, and answered, "Yes."

  
"Your mind is in a state of purging, of deterioration, is this normal for you? Do you need assistance?"

  
"I need - yes, I need assistance. I did something, no, I did not do something, long ago. Someone, someone is waiting for me on a bright beach, and I need to go to her, need to go with her, walk in the sand and show her Barcelona. Show her all the wonders of the world, forever all around her. I need to find her, need to get out of here."

  
"Here?" asked Pri. "But we are here. This is you." The hand gestured beside the Doctor, he could see the white hairs on the back of the arm whip in the breeze from the falling buildings, see the dust clinging to each hair. He could focus on that, but he couldn't seem to understand anything else.

  
Pri's voice went on. "This is your mind, Doctor. All these golden towers and buildings, they are memory and feeling, choice and emotion. All the history of your life is here. And part of that life is something that is hurting you, and you are destroying yourself, tearing yourself apart rather than let that thing keep hurting you. And I tell you, as one Doctor to another, that you must find this pain and either overcome it or cast it outside of yourself forever. Let me help you, let me lend you my skill and craft in mind healing. Because if you do not accept my help, if you do not stabilise yourself soon, you will destroy yourself. And though your body may live, Doctor, you will die…"


	10. Sarah Jane, Sold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor confronts a great trauma in his past; Sarah Jane meets her new owner.

Tragan watched the auction and saw the bidding go higher, higher - and stop. There was no closing bid, but Sarah was hauled off the stage and something leggy and pink took her place. It immediately started kicking up a fit, and the bidders paused as it was hosed down and pacified.

"Anonymous sealed bid," said the jolly auctioneer to Tragan from the corner of the stage, tucking her chins back over her shoulder with a toss of her head. "Someone had a pre-order up on a human female of her description. Of course, the sealed bid must exceed any other offer on the market." Tragan flicked a hand in understanding and headed for the exit; there the cashier pulled a metal card out of his equipment, stared at it for a moment, and handed it over with a show of reluctance. "Happy to do business with you, fellow sentient," he said, with an emphasis on the word 'happy.'

Tragan immediately stuck the card into an inner pocket, and wandered for several minutes until he could find a concealed spot where he could put his back to a wall and look at the card's credit balance. He paused as well, to make sure that nobody from the bidding booth was following him.

Then he looked. And again. He blinked his eyes, to make sure of what they were seeing, and fingered the controls along the card's edge, causing the display to roll and then show in familiar base-six Naglon digits.

He swallowed, and held the card very carefully in both hands, paying no attention to the alien bustle and roar around him. He had never held this much money in his hands in his life, he thought. Beyond independently wealthy, this was enough to live on for the rest of his life, and in style sufficient to his tastes as well. He could buy an estate, his own ship with this!

He was free! He shivered, the muscles in his back clenching and unclenching. Every inch of his new skin seemed to creep with delight; under his mask his face must have been a flaming riot of purple and vermilion. Free of everything, free to do or to buy anything. He need never serve anyone ever again!

A warship. He could buy a warship, could hunt Avva down, capture her, make her finally his. But when he thought of doing that, something inside him seemed to go silent. He waited to hear if that silence would be replaced by something else, but instead it was only silence.

He could run. With this fortune (he carefully pressed his two cards together, edge to edge, and transferred one-thousandth of the auction payment to the first card, before hiding the auctioneer's card flat against his skin), he could run and never be caught. He would win. He would be free. Flee to Joy, that was the name of the game.

He stepped out of his hiding place, walking and browsing the selection of wares with his eyes as he went. Without realizing it, his eyes lingered appreciatively on a well carved wooden box, a finely tuner neural radiator, a lithe quadruped dancing atop a fiery pyramid, a glass sphere leaping about in a force field. He appreciated the beauty of these things – possibly for the first time. Because anything he saw, anything at all, could be his if he wanted it.

He stopped at a stall and picked up a length of green cloth, then further along swapped his brown jacket for a robe cut from that same green cloth. There was a dermatology artist displaying its wares around here, he had dragged Sarah past the booth. If he was tinted another shade, he'd be less likely to be followed by Avva. Harder to find. And that was what he wanted. What she wanted.

He had to disguise himself, purchase his fare, launder his identity, get away from here, far away, away from Avva who right now was thinking of him, remembering him and the feel of his skin, thinking of him and only him.

There was a crawling sensation as the hairs on his cheeks quivered under the mask. Then, helplessly, involuntarily, he was inside Avva's mind; he was feeling her thoughts, feeling the touch of her clothes on his body, hearing the beat of her heart in his own ears. And he knew that she did not feel his presence; there was no "Hello Tragan" whispering in his mind, no awareness of his presence, even though every thought he caught from her was of him.

He began to run.

 

* * *

 

The Doctor was walking down a long stone staircase, dimly illuminated in patches by bowls of golden light. At the bottom of the steps there was a great room, so vast that the walls could not be seen.

Behind him, the vague presence that had named itself Pri said, "This is a very important part of your mind. Very deep. The events that you have saved here have taken up much of your thinking in time, and yet…" The footsteps paced back and forth behind him; the Doctor had a glimpse of a grey garment out of the corner of his eye. "It is strange that this room is so empty. Can an experience so great consist of so little?"

"Oh yes," said the Doctor. He walked into the darkness, to where a circle of illumination shone on a white tile floor. He stopped there, surrounded by darkness, starting down at the two wires that lay across it, with bare metal ends not touching. He seemed to be floating in a great black void, with just that single bit of floor to anchor him.

"Here they are, these little wires," the Doctor breathed. "The Time Lords sent me to Skaro with a mission: to change or to destroy the Daleks before they were ever created. And I knew the Daleks, none better! I knew their hatred, their treachery, their overwhelming drive for dominance, their desire to bring about the extermination of all other life forms. The Time Lords had told me that they had seen a future where the Daleks had destroyed all other forms of life. But I never realised, I never thought, that they would destroy my people. I held the fate of the Daleks in my hand! If I had destroyed the Dalek incubation room, right then, would the Daleks have rebelled against their creators? Could I have done it? Could I do it now, if I could go back?"

"You are a Time Lord?" asked the voice of Pri from the darkness.

"Yes. I am the last of them," said the Doctor. He touched his cheek to his fingers, to see if there were tears, but his face was dry. "I was there, at the end of the Time War, and I wiped out the Dalek fleet - but not before Gallifrey was destroyed."

Pri stepped in front of him, and for the first time the Doctor saw him full length. He wasn’t very imposing, a little man with a bald head and grey-purple stripes running down his face. Without a word, Pri embraced him.

“Ah,” said the Doctor, gingerly embracing back, “what’s this all about?”

Pri looked up at the Doctor, and revealed his eyes running with tears.

“I am sorry that such a choice was ever put into your hands – sorry for you. No one should have to bear such a burden. And to send you into the past to perform such a task alone! It was cruel, beyond cruel of your people to do this!”

"I was not alone, but still I failed them," said the Doctor, and a golden light suddenly shone above them. They both looked up; the dark ceiling above them was laced with cracks, and thin streamers of illuminated dust started to trickle down. "I failed my people, and now something's gone wrong with this regeneration, and I cannot stop it!"

"You must stop it, and I believe that you can," said Pri, taking both of the Doctor's hands in his. "If you do not stop it, how can you hope to undo the past?"

"I cannot undo it," said the Doctor. "What is done once cannot be undone. Paradox is a rule of time, and there are things that will come to destroy any who dare tamper."

"We know."

The Doctor stared at Pri. "You know?"

"Yes. We are also time travellers on occasion - oh, none so bold as you! We travel not in the flesh but in the mind, projecting ourselves forwards and backwards in time. On some distant planet, an empty mind will be filled with our essence and will awaken, to build and strive and love and we hope, someday, to return to us and share all that they have know."

The Doctor hung on every word, his mouth a bit open. "So you do not change the past."

"We do change it, but softly, subtly. We know of the loss of the Time Lords, and of the ones that you call the Reapers. We have taken on contracts before to change the past, and in half a hundred fulfilments we have yet to waken those dark things. If you will trust us, if you will let us help you, I think that we can work together and bring back the Time Lords, and remove the Reapers from reality."

The Doctor raised one hand, paused, and then waved it in the air, as though grasping an invisible cable. Above them, the light vanished as the cracks were sealed, and there was a slow roll of thunder through the room.

He looked upwards, looking terribly young in the light that still shone down on the two wires. He shouted, "This is a part of me!" and his words rolled like the thunder again.

The Doctor continued, his words echoing in the foundations of his mind. "I am the person who chose not to commit genocide and murder, and I would choose the same again! This decision is a part of me! This room, and all that is in it, is me and mine! And if I find a way to alter this past work of mine, I would not stop this choice from happening. It is mine!"

The word 'mine' rang sweetly through the air, and the last roll of thunder blurred into the jangling of a thousand tiny chimes.

Pri smiled, and the wattles down his face creased in a thousand tiny folds. "I think that you have found a new foundation to fill this room."

"What's that?"

"Hope."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Do you always speak in such clichés?"

Pri stepped backwards, until he was only a vague shape in the darkness. "It's in my nature. Shall we go?"

 

* * *

 

Sarah was shoved to her buyer's feet, who promptly stood her up (she noted that he, or it, only came to her shoulder), hooded her with a black bag over her head, and then pushed back into the bazaar. This was twice as bad as before: aliens and creatures bumping into her, grabbing at her, screaming in her ear, and Sarah unable to see them. She was bundled on some sort of cart that went zipping through the crowd, then was dumped off at the end like a suitcase. Then there was the sound of a door opening. They stepped forward, through the door she guessed, and into the most revoltingly sickly stench that Sarah had ever smelled. She wheezed and coughed, almost not hearing the voice of her buyer saying, "Delivery. Signature and seal, please."

His hands left her arms. A rustling of cloth and a squeaking high pitched voice, with a weird echo in it, like the alien speaking had more than one set of vocal chords. "Excellent, excellent. I apologise that the atmosphere purge was not complete. Please place the data pad in the slot beside the door."

A chain from the sounds of it was hooked to Sarah's ropes and she was stood against a wall. She leaned back, a little, feeling faint, listening, hoping that her new owner would be foolish enough to take off these ropes soon.

What Sarah thought of now as the 'delivery man' said, "Clearing out in a hurry? Your tubes are still hot."

Tubes? Engine tubes maybe? Was she on a spaceship?

The squeaking voice replied, "Yes, yes, I intercepted a transmission off the nets that is very distressing. Look-"

A rustling of cloth as the delivery man moved a few steps, a beeping.

The delivery man's voice was excited. "They've found those two, that Sast and that Naglon! Someone turned in their bodies right here in Threm!"

"Terrible, terrible!" replied the squeaker. "I have some mut-root in stasis hold that will not be a third as valuable once the Naglon blockade on the gardens of Po-2A is lifted! So I must hasten to lift and to sell, before the market reacts."

"Whatever you say." The door opened and Sarah lunged towards the sound of it, but was brought up by the ropes. She kicked against the wall behind her with one foot, straining, making a desperate noise between her teeth. She had to get out! She couldn't be taken somewhere else, not again!

The hood was pulled from her head and she was face to face with - Avva. And back on the Righteous Flea; she was tied to the wall by the door to Avva's room.

Avva looked miserable, even under the cream hiding her stripes. She looked at Sarah and said in her normal voice, "Well, that's that then."

"That is what? What am I doing back here anyway?" asked Sarah, but Avva just turned and went into the control room. But she left the door open between them, and she kept talking.

"I bought you. You're probably the most expensive sentient sold in the Threm market this decade," Avva said, her voice dry. "And right now Tragan has every millicredit of it in his pocket. If being free and fabulously wealthy doesn't make Tragan happy, nothing will."

"You are both mad as March hares!" said Sarah, spluttering.

"Yes, but he's not as mad as he used to be. Do you know, when we first met, he destroyed what he thought was a piece of irreplaceable art, just so that he could hurt my feelings? But he has spent years in my mind now, whether you can see it or not. He has seen far more of the world through my eyes than even you realise. And it has changed him. Once he is well away from me, he can give up that grovelling scared-of-Avva routine and come truly into his own. I only wish that I could see it."

A chuckle from the control room. "Here in this room, I gave Tragan the woman he hated more than anyone else in the universe just a few short years ago, gave him control over her, and turned my back. And he did-"

"Nothing! I mean," added Sarah hastily, "he didn't harm me, just tied me up. Are you saying that I was a test for him?"

"Yes. And in gratitude for your services, I will return you to the abduction ship and you may rejoin your companion there."

Sarah narrowed her eyes. "Does that mean you'll be untying me soon?"

"After takeoff, I am sad to say." Avva chuckled again.

"And what if he'd failed the test? Starting chopping me up instead? He did threaten to smother me you know!" Sarah wondered if Avva would have stepped in to stop it, or just watched.

Beeping noises from the control room, but no reply.

"Avva, what would you have done?"

Her reply seemed to make no sense. "After Tragan made his little display of you to me, what did I do to him?"

"You talked about being in stasis, and then you gave him a haircut."

"There was a shaped charge embedded in his skull; still is in fact. I arranged to have it grown there along with his new body. I pulled out the antennae and neutralised it. It's harmless now, though it will probably give him fits with security scans until he gets it taken out."

"You would have blown up - that's, I thought you loved him!"

The alien woman came out of the control room and stared at Sarah; her fists were clenched at her side.

"I do. Absolutely. But part of love is being able to know that something you love is too dangerous to ever let free. A real sentient is willing to put down her own - dog, you would say."

And she started to cry, tears running down her cheeks, along the furrows of her face.

"I could not give him up. I would not give him away. Not to the Naglons to be killed, not even to my own people to be disposed of quietly. Not after all the time I'd spent with him! He was everything I'd ever wanted; I'd never done better work than when I was with him. I was given the contract to take care of him, and I did. Everything that the deal demanded and more. He was the centre of my life! He was everything to me!

"I bought the second tank, installed it, starting growing the duplicate of Tragan, getting the linkages in. It cost a fortune, of course, but I would have spent it all for him. A good thing he had little sense of time, I had to keep putting him into deep sleep. I was close, I was so close. We could have been free! And together!"

She wiped both hands up her face and flicked the tears off her fingers; her stripes showed through the smeared makeup on her face. "But the results of my self-indulgent little affair have come home." Avva's voice loaded the word 'affair' with venom. "Results that cannot be undone. So I will make the last amends I can, I swear, I will take you to where you can get back home. I have freed Tragan and he will run fine and far and fast, and keep looking over his shoulder for me." She grinned through her tears. "But I will never come."

"You're a spoiled little brat of a girl, do you know that?" said Sarah. "Have you ever done anything worthwhile in your life except playing these little games?"

Avva growled and came to stand much too close to Sarah. The smell of bayberries was suddenly painfully sharp, making Sarah's eyes water.

"What have I done with my life? I ferried the diplomats to Lii Red when nobody else dared, and ended three wars there. I brought medicines through a hot antimatter radiation flare and prevented a plague that would have slain an entire sentient species! I fought unmanned probes, I donated to charity, I chartered regions of space that no one had ever ventured into. I have kept my word! I have given back to the Universe what I have been given, and more!

“Naglon females are cruel, cruel. Murderously cruel, worse than you can imagine. I may have harmed Tragan, yes, but I undid it, and he lives! Even when I am dead, he will still be alive! I have done that, at least, I have saved him! If not myself.”

She went into the control room, still talking as she went. "And I have the best collection of ER special interest films in the quadrant. Would you like to see?"

"No, I think not." ER was Experienced Reality: it let you feel the sensations of people as they swam, or raced, or hunted and killed. Sarah was certain that Avva's video collection would be more of the latter and none of the former.

Sarah could hear the Sast woman speaking, again in the chirpy squeaky voice. She must have some gadget in there to do that. "Bazaar Control, this is the Luminous Dhole. Why are we not in queue for the launch window?"

A crackly voice replied, "Luminous Dhole, please hold for incoming Naglon vessel not following suggested flight path."

"Bazaar Control-" and Avva's changed voice was cut off by a thundering overhead like twenty bowling balls rolling around in a car boot.

"Luminous Dhole, please proceed to launch queue," said the crackly voice.

"About time," said Avva in her own voice. "I wish…I wish I could tell Tragan to be careful, with Naglons on the Bazaar. But I can't. Better that he never sees me again, that he never hears from me again. He'll be paranoid enough."

Over the whistling of the engines, Sarah though she could hear Avva crying, in a very human way, as the ship took off.


	11. The Doctor Awakens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor sees a ghost from his past; Sarah Jane is in a tight spot.

The Doctor was sitting on the staircase, resting. Below him, Pri waited patiently.

"Are you ready to go on?" he asked.

"Yes," replied the Doctor. "I feel better now. Stronger. Are you doing that?"

"I am only showing your mind the way to heal itself. You have faced what was eroding the foundation of your mind. And you have decided to take action about it. That is enough to start the healing."

"Do you know what is up there?" said the Doctor, pointing; above them was a doorway, lit with the flickering of flames.

Pri closed his eyes, and seemed to concentrate. He spoke, his eyes still closed. "It is not dissolution up there, that I can see. It is something very powerful and important to you." Pri opened his eyes and smiled. "And I am here to share with you, Doctor. Let's go see, shall we?"

"Yes!" said the Doctor. He rose to his feet and looked down at the tattered remains of his shoes; he gestured for Pri to wait as he stripped them off, along with his socks, and went up the last steps barefoot.

They came to the top of the stairs and looked into a room full of flame. Real flame, hot and wild; they could hear the fire crackling, feel the heat pressing against their faces.

Silhouetted against the flames was what had once been a man. Shrunken, wizened, the shell of his body was confined in an elaborate travel chair, with wires embedded in his skull and face. One hand remained, and the outline of it could just be seen trembling before him. His eyes were gone, or hidden in their deep-set sockets; in his creased forehead glowed a glass and metal implant that looked like a third eye. The flames leaped behind him, a solid wall, but did not seem to burn or mark him.

"Davros," whispered the Doctor. "Creator of the Daleks. A madman. A genius. He was even more dangerous than his own creations, I know that now. We have fought over centuries, over multiple regenerations of myself. If I had known what I know now of him, when I arrived on Skaro at the creation of the Daleks, I would have…"

"Killed him?" prompted Pri.

"…No." The Doctor stared into the flames; the light of them struck red highlights from his dark hair. "He was mad, completely mad. But think what he could have accomplished if he were sane! Think if he could have been cured! This flame," he gestured at the flickering fire, "it is a good symbol for him, d'you know? He burned, always. He was Force, pure and simple. It would be taking a light out of the universe to assassinate him."

"You think like a Sast," said Pri. "We seek redemption in even the deepest pits of sentient behaviour, and you'd be surprised at some of the gems we find."

The Doctor pointed at the silent black figure in the flames. "If I help you find Skaro, and pinpoint the moment when the Daleks were not yet created, when they could have been destroyed. You say you will be able to alter their destiny, and prevent the death of the Time Lords. And."

"And?"

"And - what will it cost me?"

Pri blinked, his white hair floating in the hot breeze. "Do you think we like working in wild time, knowing that one slip will see all involved destroyed? The Time Lords were powerful, but also passive. Watching, not acting. A universe in balance, in stability, will be repayment."

"Payment in full?" pressed the Doctor.

Pri sighed. "Doctor, what we will do will benefit both of us. If at the end of time, you think that we have given more than you have, we will ask you for a favour. That is all."

The Doctor paced back and forth, in front of the flames, staring at the symbol of Davros that burned in his own mind. "What makes you think that I can be trusted to repay your favour?"

"Come and see," invited Pri.

The Doctor let himself be led away. They turned and were on a balcony, and the Doctor took a deep breath. He laid his hands on the stone railing in front of him, and laughed, a laugh of pure joy for the first time in - in too long.

He was looking over the golden city and it was whole; it stretched out as far as the eye could see, pillars and minarets and spires and arches, rivers flowing, parks tossed with trees. There were banners of a thousand colours flying through the air, and the city seemed to breathe the scent of life itself into his nostrils.

Pri smiled and opened his arms wide. "Look at this all! It is all of your life! All that you know is here, all that you have seen. Is it not beautiful? Is it not worth saving, to know that while you live, all that is here is also alive in part? If you were a deceitful person, this would be a city of shadows, of crooked streets and mazes, where every thought was lost. I can see you in the structure of your mind, and it is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! I am the richer for having met you, Doctor, and I would pass on this richness to my people. Will you not come up now, and meet them?"

The Doctor looked at the beaming little man, and said, "Well, all right," and awoke.

He was in a large room, sitting in what appeared to be an overstuffed chair, and he was surrounded by ghosts.

He sat up, and saw that some of the people around him were real. Sast, with purple or red stripes across their faces. But among them and through them were other figures, semi-transparent; and not all of them were humanoid. Like giant crabs or spiders with human faces, they stood - and then bowed. All of the figures, solid and ghostly, bowed their heads to the Doctor.

"Master," piped up K-9 from the Doctor's feet; the Doctor noticed that one of the crablike figures' legs went straight through K-9's back.

"Holographic projection," he said to himself, and turned to his right at a flicker of movement. There, a woman with blue-grey hair was sitting up from her own chair. She smiled at him.

"Hello, Doctor. I am Pri Omet-J," she said, extending her hand. The Doctor grasped it, and said, "Hello. And thank you."

"The pleasure was all mine," Pri replied, her stripes flushing dark.

"I didn't know that Sast were telepathic," said the Doctor.

"Oh, only a few, a very few, can show the path into another mind that is not Sast. I myself cannot, I needed help," Pri said, gesturing with her chin over the Doctor's shoulder. The Doctor turned, and stared.

Lying in the chair next to his was what could only be described as a beautiful boy. The Sast wattles along his face were barely raised from his skin, and the dusky curve of his cheek, his tousled hair and slender neck, all were matchless. There was just the ghost of a smile on his perfect lips, as he opened his great eyes and stared at the Doctor.

The Doctor stared back, and finally whispered, "If Da Vinci had ever met you, there would be no Mona Lisa - because he would have painted you instead."

The boy smiled wider, and said only, "Welcome back, Doctor."

 

*** * ***

 

"What's this contract you keep taking about?" wondered Sarah, seated in one of the metal chairs and finishing off a bowl of the rather spicy stew that Avva had offered her.

Avva sat in the chair across from her. "The Parakon Corporation used to employ Tragan, back when it was run by Chairman Freeth. When the company President took control back, Tragan was arrested, but what could he be tried for? While he had wallowed in wanton cruelty and murder, all that he had done that was technically illegal was conspiracy to deceive - a five year sentence at most. And then what? He was much too dangerous a character to let loose."

Avva scratched at her nose. "So Onya-"

"Onya! I met her!" exclaimed Sarah. "She gave you Tragan?"

"Well, not gave as in handed him over officially. She gave us the information we needed to break him out of prison, and said that Tragan was never to leave our care until it was safe for him to do so. Think of it as long term therapy."

"Was turning him into a carpet part of the therapy?"

Avva looked abashed. "It certainly forced him to be passive, didn't it? But even then, when he had barely been in my hands half a year, there were rumbles that the Naglons were looking for him. They would have killed him after long torture for not suiciding upon capture. But they were looking for a Naglon, not for a carpet. Tragan and I had," Avva sniffled, "we had a lot of time together. Now that he is free," she sniffled again, "I find that I am glad that I will not be here much longer."

"Here?" asked Sarah patiently. She was getting a bit sick of the sniffling.

"After I return to the Sast, I will be diffused. My memories will be taken up and shared by all the people, but my personality and my body will be gone. I, as I am myself and one, will be dead." Avva giggled. "I wonder if the Sast will all suddenly fall in love with Tragan? Wouldn't that be a shock to them."

There was a chiming noise from the control room, and Avva said "Excuse me," and rose to attend to it. When she returned, she was unsmiling.

"The abduction machine is still on its previous course, but there has been some damage to its exterior. And I'm not getting any life sign readings."

"Maybe the Doctor left?" asked Sarah.

"Hmm, only if the robots let him go. I said they could have him as a docking fee-"

"You WHAT!" said Sarah. "How could you!"

"I panicked!" snapped Avva in return. "I'm not proud of it, but I went from dying to resurrection to finding a time traveller's companion in stasis in my bedroom, and I was terrified. I threw him out and ran. I," she wrapped her arms around herself, "I am sorry. I should not have done it. And I will die before I ever do it again." She shrugged. "Literally."

"Still, under the circumstances, I don't think I should send a docking signal," continued Avva. "Whoever was here before seems to have holed the landing bay nicely, I can just slip in and set up a force field to hold in some atmosphere."

"Not just going to throw me out on my ear?" asked Sarah.

"No," said Avva, "and I wish you wouldn't harp on it. Now this," she handed Sarah a squat metal box with a handle that reminded her of a cowbell, "projects a magnetic field, it will sweep the little robots aside and scramble their memory patterns at the same time. Trigger button is there."

The Flea drifted soundlessly into the abduction machine's docking bay through one of the massive holes in its doors. It anchored itself to the floor, then a sphere of sparkles seemed to move out from its hull and then dissipate.

"There's still atmosphere, what do you know," said Avva from the control room. "Whoever came in must have left the atmosphere shields they installed. Or the abduction machine put them up. Anyway," and the Flea lurched under them.

"What?" asked Sarah.

"Something's wrong," said Avva, her fingers and feet flying over the control panels and pedals. "The Flea's computer is being tapped from the outside, someone's trying to take it over! Computer, disregard alien intrusion! Cease engine shutdown sequence!" Nothing happened.

Avva shouted, "Hellfreeze, that's a Naglon fighter ship out there! I've lost voice control, I'm being forced out of the computer. Can't fly out. Sarah, if they find you here they'll butcher you for sure. You can take your chances in the abduction machine." She thrust a pistol into Sarah's free hand. "A stunner, it won't kill except at point-blank range. Get out now!" she snarled, her stripes so pale they had almost vanished.

"What about you?" said Sarah, backing towards the door.

Avva's face was as stony and frozen as Tragan's mask. "I fight best alone. And anyway, if the Naglons kill me, they will be sure to trumpet it across the galaxy. The war will be over, that will be enough." The Flea's engines started to burble, and Avva screamed, "Run, now!"

Sarah ran, out through the Flea's door (it closed halfway as she passed through, almost catching her), across the docking bay (she saw the flare of another engine through the hole to space, even as the Flea hopped and skipped across the deck like its namesake), and then hid herself behind a pile of debris. After all, she only had Avva's word that it was Naglons. It might be the Doctor, for all she knew. She clutched the cowbell-gun close, but didn't see any of the little robots, except squished flat. The pistol went into one of her pockets; she didn't want to use it unless she had to.

A ship bristling with weapons swooped into the landing bay and landed on top of the Flea, sideways, clutching it with unpleasant looking grapples. A hatch opened and a figure in heavy metal armour slid out and dashed into the Flea.

Sarah waited, breathless, her finger tracing the line of the pistol in her pocket over and over again. What was going to happen?

Where was the Doctor?

 

* * *

 

The Doctor was, at the moment, sipping something very similar to tea, and enjoying it very much.

The figures around him had been introduced: they were the Sast High Command, and the long legged crab-people were Sast Primes, the mature form of the species. They were attending on the Doctor from across half the galaxy via holographic projector.

"But why all this for me?" asked the Doctor, munching on a sweet flat thing rather like a biscuit.

One of the holographic Primes pointed with several tendrils; the Doctor looked over his shoulder to see the TARDIS sitting behind his chair, looking rather out of place.

"We recognise that this is a powerful time travel device. We have no wish to conflict with the controller of it," said the Prime, his voice crackling over the link. "And according to Pri, you would like to make a contract with us."

"Well, first things first!" The Doctor put down the biscuit on the arm of his chair. "I need to find the Righteous Flea, there's a friend of mine on it."

"The Righteous Flea has changed its transponder signal, it is now the Luminous Dhole," said the Sast Captain. "We traced it to the Threm Bazaar, but lost the signal there."

"And the Naglons are looking for the Flea because of a carpet, am I right? That's what they want, not the passengers?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," replied the Captain.

"Because the passengers chucked me out onto the abduction machine, and flew off with my companion, apparently trapped in a stasis field! Rude of them," complained the Doctor.

The Captain frowned. "Passengers? Plural?"

"Yes, two, male and female, K-9 had a recording of it," said the Doctor, reaching down to tickle the robot dog's antennae ears.

"Avva has not taken a passenger onto her ship in some time." The Captain pursed his lips. "Certainly, we would not expect her to have one while she was fleeing capture."

"Well, they appeared to be in stasis themselves, whatever. In big tanks under the floor," the Doctor offered helpfully. "And there was a dead body too."

One of the Primes jumped up in the air, and landed in a flurry of soundlessly drumming legs; the others wore expressions of shock. "Tanks under the floor? Describe them!" Doctor Pri snapped.

"Well, the floor opened up, and these two tanks came out. Someone came out of each one who been packed in a sort of jelly from the looks of it, and then K-9 got chucked out the door," said the Doctor, looking at their strained faces. "What's wrong?"

With a gesture, two faces appeared before the Doctor, hovering in midair. He leaned back in his chair, dark eyes wide.

"Are these the people you saw?" asked the Prime.

"That's Tragan, isn't it?" said the Doctor, pointing at the male face. "The other one," he pointed at the female Sast face, "I didn't see her face, but if those stripes go all the way down her torso, it might have been her."

"You saw Tragan on the Flea?"

"No, we've met before."

"If there were two suspension tanks active," said another holographic figure, "Avva may have done something truly forbidden. With Tragan."

"I thought Tragan was dead and made into the carpet in question," asked the Doctor.

"He was made into a carpet, but he was not dead," said Doctor Pri. "He was transformed as part of his contract of confinement and cure between us and the Parakon Corporation. If Avva has allowed Tragan another body," the Sast scowled deeply, "then she has stepped beyond all bounds of Sast law. She has broken contract. Tragan has not been tested and judged as sane enough to be allowed a mobile form."

The Doctor was still working through the implications of the first part of this statement. "You made him into a carpet?" he said incredulously. "And the Parakon Corporation approved of this?"

Another Sast, the co-Pilot, spoke up. "Perhaps Tragan's new form was failing. Perhaps Avva was deranged by her love for him. Or perhaps she judged him truly cured. In any case, this is all the more reason to take the Flea and its passengers alive."

One of the Primes stomped again. "That was never in question!"

"Oh really?" The co-Pilot raised a sceptical eyebrow. "I have heard many words weighing the lives lost in this war against the life of one little Sast rebel girl. I certainly hope that we are going to judge her, both of them, fairly. If we are right about the suspension tanks and the abduction machine, she may have been incommunicado since before the war began - how would she know the price of her actions?"

The various Sast, present and projected, murmured to one another at this.

"Now look!" snapped the Doctor, and everyone immediately stopped and looked at him. He paused, and continued in a milder tone, "If Tragan is alive and mobile, you absolutely have to find him and get Sarah Jane Smith away from him. They've met before, and he's sure to behave abominably towards her. We can discuss further contracts between us after they're found."


	12. Reunions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Avva and Tragan reunite; the Doctor makes plans with the Sast.

The figure in Naglon armour thundered into the Flea, weapons drawn. He faced Avva, who was standing in a somewhat strained pose with one hand behind her head. "Drop your weapons," he growled, his voice a distorted male bellow through the suit speakers. "Or I will kill you now!"

"Kill me," replied Avva.

The Naglon paused, and then said, "Where is your trophy?"

Avva sneered. "That Naglon pelt of mine? Oh, it was getting tattered around the knife wounds, so I threw it out. Probably someone's lining their pet cage with it right now."

The Naglon growled. "He died under your knife?"

Avva said clearly, "The Parakon Corporation kept him drugged in captivity, he could not focus his will to die. When I abducted him, I did not know this. He ended his own life as soon as the drugs wore off."

"The Sast ordered you to return to their space, why did you not obey!"

"I was trapped in stasis aboard this ship. Now that I am free, I can do what my people want me to do." She pulled her hand from behind her head, and pressed the stunner to her temple. "I can die."

At point blank range she fired. Her spasming body collapsed and stilled, and the gun flew out of her grasp and slid across the floor to the Naglon's feet. He lifted his foot, and crushed the stunner under it. Then he stepped heavily to her body, and knelt on one knee. He turned her head with the barrel of his weapon; it rolled loosely on her neck, and her face was still. A little trickle of saliva ran from the corner of her mouth

The Naglon leaned back, holstered his weapons in the integral armour pockets and opened his helmet. Then he removed it, and laid it on the deck beside Avva's body. He wiped away the saliva with one armoured finger.

"So, Sast," he said, "even in the face of death, you lie and think only of your illicit Naglon lover?"

The body did not react, and he leaned closer. "I can hear your mind. Across the light years I followed you, followed your every thought. I can hear you thinking of how the stunner charge was a fake, how you're perfectly well and just looking for the right moment to escape. My Goddess," he sneered.

The corpse's eyes slowly opened, and looked up to see a familiar masked face. "Tragan," she whispered, and then her eyes widened. "I can't hear anything from your mind."

"I know everything that you're thinking. You're thinking of me, of how I'll be safe now, of how I'll be free. And my reputation intact, even! You are thinking of the war being fought right now, between my people and yours. You're thinking of your-"

He stopped and put his cold armoured hand on her face.

"Your mother is dead. O, Avva. The Naglons killed her. Because of me. And you're thinking, you're wishing that I had never found out about it."

Avva squeezed her eyes shut, tears staining her lashes, but Tragan's voice droned on. "You're thinking of all the Sast that have died, and you are sorry. You are thinking of the Naglons who have died. And you are sorry? Sorry for them?"

"I would have nobody else be hurt by what I did," she whispered, even as Tragan rose and hauled her to her feet. "I've given it up, Tragan, I don't want to hurt the world, I just want you. Wanted you. Now you're free." As he pinned her to the wall with one hand, she continued, "If you hurt me now, Tragan, you will feel it too. Every moment of my death, it will be for you as well. You certainly enjoyed that sort of thing before. I would rather die at your hand than live without you.”

Tragan plucked a barbed dagger from its sheath on the outside of his armour and in one smooth thrust touched it to Avva's eye - her eyelid rather, which had flicked closed as she saw the bright edge approach her face. Other than that, she had not moved one muscle.

Tragan's voice was a flat growl. "I want only one thing from you. An answer. The answer of the dice."

Avva licked her lips; her one open eye stared steadily at Tragan's face.

"At the very beginning, the beginning of my end. Thirty years ago and more. You and I, we knelt on a Sast deck and rolled the dice, one apiece."

"You rolled for your freedom, and I rolled for your life. I remember that moment," Avva smiled carefully and slowly, so as not to move her face under the threat of the blade. "Very fondly."

Tragan leaned close, the blade still steady, touching her eyelid. "We rolled, and you laughed. And they, the Sast, took me away to await your tortures. Tell me, Avva, tell me now, what was the roll?"

"Eight."

Tragan paused, as though waiting for her to say more. The hand with the dagger did not waver. "Eight what?"

"Eight apiece, Tragan."

Now his hand shivered, and he lowered it to his side as she spoke.

"We each rolled an eight. A tie. We would have had to roll again. And I looked down and laughed, because I had seen what it had done to you to cast that first roll, and I was imagining what torment the second would be, and already planning if we could make it two out of three. But instead, you just closed your eyes. You surrendered."

His answer came slowly. "I did. I surrendered to you, even as you surrendered yourself to me. And you remember that moment as one of the happiest moments of your life. The moment when you knew that you would have me, as your own, for the rest of my life. And you hoped, for the rest of yours."

Avva licked her lips again. "You - you are reading my thoughts at a level much deeper than you ever could before."

"Do you object?" he said, stepping closer.

"No," she said, looking up at him. Her eyes did not move from his face. Tragan's hand opened, and the dagger fell and clanged on the bare deck. She leaned close, closer, and then her head darted forward and her mouth locked on Tragan's. For one long, breathless moment they were lost in the kiss, oblivious to everything else.

Then they parted, and stared into each others' eyes, faces close enough to touch.

"I love you, Tragan," Avva whispered.

Tragan whispered back, "I love you, Avva, but…"

"But?" she said.

"But you taste terrible."

Avva smiled and blinked, as though blinking away tears. "Well, so do you for that matter. Incompatible biochemistry, I guess."

"And I don’t care," he said, taking her in his armoured arms and crushing her to him, kissing her again. Their eyes rolled shut in unison.

There was a squeak of a boot sole against metal from the doorway. Tragan and Avva opened their eyes, then turned themselves a little towards the doorway. There stood Sarah Jane, gun pointing at them and mouth open in shock.

Tragan disengaged from the kiss and said indignantly, "So there you are!"

"If you've been capturing my thoughts, you know that I bought her and I freed her. Tragan, she's too dangerous to keep around," said Avva. "So don't get any ideas, let's just go. In your ship or mine."

"You overpaid for her, you know." Tragan's voice was sarcastic. "A lot."

"Hey!" said Sarah indignantly.

"I wanted you to have the money, Tragan. For your escape. Which was why you had enough money to buy a Naglon fighter and armour suit. But forget about her, let's go. Anywhere, Tragan, anywhere so long as it's with you," murmured Avva, burying her face in his hair, standing on tiptoe to nuzzle him. "Leave her and let's go."

"Maybe I don't want to leave her," said Tragan, taking a few steps towards Sarah, who pointed the gun a little more definitely at him. There was a high singing in her ears as -

No, the singing was in all of their ears.

The singing became a voice, bellowing, "AVVA OMET-J ABOARD THE RIGHTEOUS FLEA!"

Avva squealed and clapped her hands to her ears. She said "Computer, half volume!" even as Tragan shouted, "Computer, quarter volume!"

The voice was quieter as it continued, "This is the Sast warship Thundering Hypocrisy! You will return to us! This is the will of the Sast! Cease your defiance and return to us!"

The Flea's control room, crowded with two, was positively snug with three; Avva hunched her shoulders as Sarah and Tragan squeezed in behind her.

"They're right outside the abduction machine, Tragan, I can't get us out," Avva finally said, looking up at him with tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry. I tried."

"What you're thinking is 'Tragan, you pulsating spawn of a sponge, I spent everything I had getting you to safety and you hopped back into danger with both feet,'" he answered. "But why don't they come in after us?" Without answering his own question, he whirled and stamped off; they heard his footsteps outside the ship.

"You will cease blocking the transmat system and allow us to recover your hostages!" said the voice.

"Hostages - plural?" said Sarah. "Could they know I'm here? Could the Doctor be with them?" Rescue at last?

"Maybe. Maybe," said Avva. "I'm not blocking the transmat, it must be the abduction machine's automated systems doing it. Typical of pirates."

Tragan came barrelling back into the room, which was really not made for barrelling into. "Mines! Naglon explosives. No wonder they aren't coming in, it's enough to shatter any approaching ship."

Avva flicked a control and the screen in front of them lit; the ship pictured looked big. Very big.

"The Thundering Hypocrisy is a E-class ship, Tragan. It out-masses the abduction machine by a factor of four. If they aren't coming in, it's because they want us out in one piece. They want to - they want to dissect my brain, bit by bit, and find out where I went wrong. They'll take me apart. And they'll take you alive, Tragan, and give you to the Naglons, and they'll, they'll!" and her voice was lost in a cry of grief.

Tragan put one heavy armoured gauntlet atop Avva's head. "Gods, Avva, you care more about my suffering than you do your own death. Why didn't you tell me this? Why didn't you show me this?"

"I tried, I did try. I thought the limit must be in my sending, not in your receiving. When this new brain was grown in your new body, either something was added or something was subtracted, and now you can see me all the way down - and I can't hear a thing from you." She put her own hand up, tentatively, and touched his fingers. "And I miss you."

"If you're quite done billing and cooing, would you mind explaining what the Sast are going to do with me?" asked Sarah, ducking under Tragan's elbow that was in her face.

Avva jerked her chin. "The Sast know of time travel and of the Time Lords. They will not harm a companion of a Time Lord unnecessarily; and if the Doctor cannot be found, they may even be able to point you towards a decently priced fare to Earth. Of course, you would owe them something in return."

"Like what?" asked Sarah. "I haven't got any of your money, or credits or whatever."

"A favour, probably. Someday, somewhere, someone would come to you and say 'You owe the Sast, come and pay your debt' and you would give shelter to the cold and homeless, or feed the hungry, or comfort the dying. A necessary thing, we do not waste such debts on trivialities."

"Of course, I have plenty of money," said Tragan. "Perhaps you could perform some personal services for me." He rolled his eye to look at her.

Sarah leaned as far away from Tragan as she could in the tiny room. Unfortunately his armoured body was blocking most of the door. "Not even!"

"Oh, but I will never see you again, probably, and I do so want to give you something to remember me - BY!" The BY! came as Tragan stepped forward into the room and Sarah took her chance to slip past him and outside. She went for the door of the Flea, running, and did not look back.

Tragan turned in pursuit, and Avva stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"I heard you thinking that I must scare her off, why?" he asked.

"Because we need to plan. Dump the armour first, and grab some rope," she said in a conversational tone.

Tragan stepped out into the main room, popped his armour and started peeling it off, dropping it carelessly about the floor. He opened a cabinet and said, "We're out of rope."

Avva was pacing in a tiny circle, watching him strip. "Nameless stars! Well, we'll use wire, I guess. By the way, how did you take over the Flea's engine systems?"

"You never revoked my Honoured Passenger status. I just called the computer and told it what to do." His face rippled with smug satisfaction.

Avva rolled her own eyes. "Damn, I didn't even think of that happening. Tragan, I think we have to capture Sarah Jane alive."

"What? For bait?" he said, adjusting his rather rumpled clothes.

"No. For witness," said Avva.

Their eyes met, and their thoughts; and they began to chuckle in eerie unison.

 

* * *

 

A screen appeared at the Captain's elbow, and he focussed on it. "The Flea has retreated to the abduction machine, and is not returning our hails. There are three life signs on board. The Bazaar records show that a Naglon and a female human left that ship, went onto the market, and then the human was sold back to the ship's owner. So, if that human is Sarah Jane Smith, one of those life signs should be hers. But three life signs?"

One of the other crew said, "Sir, transponder signal of a standard Naglon fighter ship is in there with the Flea. And one of the life signs could be Naglon. If we wanted to get information on what ships are on board, we could try send a standard information docking signal -"

"NO!" shouted the Doctor. "The ship is mined, if you send a signal it could explode!"

The Sast Captain gestured to the crewmembers physically present and ordered, "Bring in the Naglons and ask them!"

Four of the Naglons were wheeled in - literally; each of them was seated in a comfortable chair rather similar to the Doctor's, but they were bound to them by what looked like clear plastic film. They seemed quite unable to break free, though they were definitely trying.

"I will roll in your entrails, Sast scum!" bellowed what could only be the Nabob.

"Tell me, Head-Fist, have you been up to mischief on that abduction machine? Say, rigging it to explode? Or stationing a fighter craft there to wait for anyone who might return?" asked the Sast.

"Why should I tell you!" bellowed the Nabob - or Head-Fist, the Doctor supposed he should start thinking of him as. "You are the enemy! We will destroy you all!"

"Pests," sighed the Sast. "Again and again we ask you to stop fighting with us and work with us instead, and you do nothing but lash out. This war is stupid and you are being a fool. You have information we need, and I do not want to wait for you to get bored and tell us. Telepath?"

The boy sat up and frowned at the Captain, his lower lip jutting out in a pout. "I do not rape," he said, his thin voice carrying clearly. "If they do not want to let me into their minds, I will not go there. And I am offended that you would suggest it," he said, sliding out of the chair and stalking out with all the dignity that his small form could carry.

The Captain paused, and said quietly, "He is right and I apologise."

Around the corner in the corridor, where the Naglons could not see, the telepathic boy leaned against the wall and whispered, "Apology accepted, Captain. Now, I will listen to see if any of the Naglons will speak to me of their own will."

He sat on the floor, cross-legged, and closed his eyes.

The Head-Fist was useless, his mind one long shout of denial. But the others were neutral, and one of them, the one with the strong blue marks across his face, was brimming with curiosity about the Sast.

The blue-marked Naglon, Chir was his name, had heard the rumours about Sast being able to bring pleasures to Naglon males. Considering that no Naglon female would have him with his markings, Chir was wild to know if the rumours were true. To have a mate, one who would not scorn him but accept him, to have someone who would give him the pleasures he had heard so richly described by others - it would be worth giving up his miserable berth for that! Worth leaving the Naglons forever for!

The telepath smiled to himself, and reached out one hand, loosely clenched into a fist. "Knock knock," he whispered. "May I come in?"

The invitation was swift in following. Information poured back and forth, with the Sast giving far more than he received, but one thing was clear: there had been no Naglon fighters left aboard the abduction machine, because-.

"The Doctor is correct: the machine is mined, and will go off if signalled or hailed," whispered the telepath into the Sast Captain's mind. "No Naglon was left aboard." The Captain projected warmth and approval in return.

The Doctor had risen from his chair and gone to the TARDIS doors. "Surely I could just scoot over there and grab her!"

"Scoot where?" asked one of the holographic attendees. "That abduction machine is a lot of territory to cover. And then there are the explosives; they could go off at any moment. Avva is a rational sentient, let her come out and bring the Earth girl with her. If not, we can send in our own ships, or peel that abduction machine like a fruit - no, the hostages might be harmed. So, we will wait."

"I hope that she is a rational sentient," said the Doctor. "From what I've seen so far, you aren't the sort of people I would really trust to be mucking around in Time."

"Time travellers!" howled the Head-Fist, straining against his gossamer-thin bonds in frustration. "I told you so! Perverts and demons, all of them! Corruptors of the pure of heart!"

"I am a Time Lord," said the Doctor, leaning over the captive Naglon, "and you should have a care as to where you point that tongue of yours, or I will ask the Sast to wrap your jaw shut as well. Now," he turned to the Sast, "we need to discuss our contract. What assurances can you give me that you can do the job?" He did not say what the contract would involve, mindful of Naglon ears.

"We have databanks that can be connected to your machine for analysis, if you please," said a Sast in a white uniform.

"I do please," said the Doctor, fishing for the TARDIS key around his neck.

"They are unclean monsters! Ignore them!" snarled the Nabob, from his armchair.

The Captain's facial stripes flushed dark in exasperation. "Will someone stick the Head-Fist into the corner and put some violent pornography in front of him so that we can pay attention to the Doctor?" Two Sast pushed the chair as indicated and activated some sort of flickering holographic screen around his head in a ribbon shape; the Doctor was disappointed that no dunce cap seemed forthcoming.

With a little help from K-9, a chain of cables was soon snaking through the TARDIS' opened doors and disappearing under her console; the Doctor watched on his screens as his machine and the Sast computers compared records, delighted. Beside him stood two Sast Time Carvers (as they introduced themselves) and the young Sast telepath; he was all eyes at being inside an actual TARDIS of the Time Lords.

"It's not just that you do this manipulation of time, it's that you do it so well! So deftly!" the Doctor said, beaming. "The slightest touch, and enemies become friends, wars become ritual conflicts, the paths of nations and planets flow better again!"

The telepath blushed and answered, "We have been doing this for a long time, the projection of minds. We have had our efforts reversed by the Time Lords before, but never by you, I think. And as for the others, the defenders of Time," the screen showed a swarm of black things devouring a Sast and the equipment around him, as he screamed and screamed, "once we knew of them, we were careful not to rouse them."

"I wish I could write a book with you," said the Doctor. "How to Manipulate Time for Fun and Happiness."

"And profit as well, thought the fun and happiness is usually part of the profit."

As the Doctor stepped outside of the TARDIS, in deep discussion with the Sast Time Carvers, the Naglon Head-Fist started shouting from the corner of the room. "This program is disgusting! Obscene and repulsive! It doesn't even have a title sequence, how can I tell what it is!"

The Doctor and the Sast looked at the Head-Fist, who twisted and ducked his head under the edge of the screen to glare at them. "So that I can avoid it in the future!"

The Sast all laughed, not in unison.


	13. Martyrs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A surprising video broadcast; the Doctor makes a contract.

Sarah Jane did put up a good run for it, but Avva had cheated: she had a remote control that let her turn off the stunner from a distance. Sarah did some damage using the cowbell-gun to chuck robots at the pursuing pair, but finally they cornered her.

She was tied up (of course) by the two chortling aliens, who half-carried her into what could be a control room. Fastening her into what looked like a shower stall in one wall, Tragan said, "Well Miss Smith, it's time that we finally say goodbye."

"You're leaving?" asked Sarah hopefully.

"More accurately, we're going out with a bang," said Avva, as her blue shift slipped off to puddle around her feet. "And you get to watch." The Sast's wattles ran out in raised purple stripes that spiralled around her torso, concentrating on certain more female areas. She was definitely female.

"And smile," said Tragan, pulling his mask and then his shirt off over his head. Sarah stared at the unnatural way his arms joined with his torso, the series of flat reticulated plates that covered his front like a crab or an armadillo, his pulsating pallid face, and remembered his long-ago description of himself as 'barely humanoid.'

"S-smile? Why?" she said, her voice shaking involuntarily. She got the distinct impression that going out with a bang might mean something - very bad.

"Because you're on camera!" gloated Avva, as she touched some control on the panel behind her, then pushed Tragan into a nearby chair and began grappling with him to see who could be the first to get his trousers off.

 

* * *

 

"Captain, we have a transmission from the abduction machine!" said a voice from the air.

"Put it on the main screen!" the Captain ordered, and every face in the room turned towards the screen as it lit up. And then, some faces turned away, some stripe-blushed purple or black or pink, while others lit with the most interesting range of emotions: excitement, shock, lust, curiosity…

The Head-Fist took in what was happening on the main screen, and his face swelled alarmingly, bubbling like angry mud. The other Naglons started doing the same, but the Doctor had a feeling that some or all were simply imitating their leader.

The Head-Fist shouted "Tragan. Tragan! TRAGAN! You scum-swilling pervert! Put your shirt back on!"

Tragan, it seemed, was paying no attention. He was far more interested in the rather unclothed young lady sitting in his lap, her back to her viewers. Her fingers were flickering in precise patterns, up and down his ribs. He was licking along the edge of her jaw with long sweeping strokes of his black tongue, and she twisted with delight at every stroke. The stripes edging her spine were throbbing from purple to black as she moaned, twisting in her lover's knotted arms.

"You lied!" howled the Head-Fist. "He has been alive and hostage all this time, a Sast plaything! We will fight you for a thousand years to cleanse this insult!"

"Incoming transmission only, they are not receiving us," said the voice from the air again.

"Is that Avva? And are they doing what I think they are?" asked the Doctor of the Sast beside him.

"Oh yes," she said, and smiled. The other Sast seemed interested as well; one whistled, and two of them started clapping in time. Some of the holographic Primes were leaping up and down like excited spiders, their flailing legs blurring through each other's and through the people present.

"I thought that was impossible, hormones or something," said the Doctor, watching with grave absorption.

"Oh no," said the Captain. "Not for Naglons. It's all in the cilia, you see. You need a delicate touch to handle Naglons, very delicate indeed. It takes surgery of the hands, and a lot of training." And the Captain noted out of the corner of his eye how the blue-spotted Naglon, Chir, marked down every one of his words.

Once the couple on the screen was done, well, coupling, they draped their clothing about themselves and stood, hand in hand. The Doctor stood as well, pointing.

"Sarah Jane!"

It was Sarah Jane Smith, tied into a booth on the wall behind Tragan. Her eyes and mouth were wide open; apparently she'd found the sights as alarming as the Head-Fist had.

"You've got to save her!" implored the Doctor of the Sast around him. But one of them shushed them, as Avva began to speak.

"My sisters, my brothers, my fellow Sast. I am sorry, more sorry than I can say, for the chaos and loss of life that my actions have caused. I can see no way that I can ever undo what has been done. But I can stop it from getting worse. I can die."

"No!" shouted the Doctor.

"Yes!" gloated the Head-Fist. "They will destroy themselves! At last the universe will be rid of them!"

"Still jamming the transmat system?" asked the Captain, and got a pained nod in response.

The Naglons hissed as Tragan spoke up. "My Naglon brothers, I have betrayed our codes by living in captivity. I was physically unable to end my life - but even before then, when I could have chosen to die, I did not. But I tell you that I would rather live a day as Avva Omet-J's partner, than rule as the Emperor of Naglon for the rest of my life. And now," he raised their entwined hands and planted a kiss on the back of hers, "I choose to die with her."

"Get a fusion suppressor aimed at them!" shrilled the Captain. "We've got to stop this!"

"Chemical explosives. Anything that could suppress that reaction would be fatal to the people onboard," said the co-Pilot, weeping. "Oh Avva, don't do it!"

On the screen, Avva and Tragan extended their clasped hands towards the viewers, and then lowered them, down, towards the control panel that must be there; lower, lower, out of range of the camera as they kissed-

"Yes!" shouted the Head-Fist.

"No!" shouted the Doctor and all the Sast, drowning out the Head-Fist entirely.

The screen went black, and there was a long moment of silence, followed by an eerie rattling as the tremendous explosion out in space shook the ship. The rattling faded into a whining noise. An alarm?

"The transmat!" shouted the Doctor, pointing.

The transmit chamber set into the side of the room came alight with a rising whine, and the Head-Fist started to howl.

"You see! It was all a trick! They did not know that there would be witnesses! Now your treachery is revealed! You faked their deaths to fool us, but you will have to slay every Naglon here to silence us!"

The other Naglons didn't look like they approved of their leader offering them all up for sacrifice like that, considering the colours they were turning.

The transmat hummed, and deposited - a lovely lady tied head to toe in an elaborate wire harness, squinting as though into a bright light. And no one else.

"UNTIE ME!" the lovely lady bellowed in a most frustrated voice, and several of the Sast leaped forward to do so. One stopped, and touched the transmit pad next to Sarah's.

"Blood," the Sast said, showing the red smear across his palm. "And on the other one too."

One of the holographic figures waved several arms. "Test it."

The Sast went to a computer, touched his bloodied hands to the sensor pads, and read the results. "The blood is Sast and Naglon. Avva and Tragan. Their blood."

"Ah!" said the Doctor. "So since the transmat has only three receptors, and one was receiving Sarah and the others - oh no, did something go wrong with the beam?"

"No," said the holographic Prime. "There is not enough blood for such an error. They contaminated the transmat pads with living cells, proving that they had not been beamed somewhere else. They are dead."

She stopped, and all off the Sast keened together, softer than the wind. "A Sast has died!" the Prime whispered. "Warn Heaven and Hell, that a Sast has died."

"At last!" sneered the Head-Fist. "The pervert and his -"

One of the Sast touched her finger to the Naglon's mouth. "I would be careful how you speak of our dead sister. She died to end our conflict. You should honour her for that, if nothing else."

"At least her disgusting personal habits died with her," said the Naglon leader, suffering himself to be unwrapped from his chair with poor grace. "Honour to Tragan, who deceived Avva into killing herself by feigning feelings towards her. Honour him! At least he took her with him into death!"

"Other Sast have had the cilia operation, I believe. The next Sast hand you touch might give you quite the surprise."

The Head-Fist slumped in his chair and stuck his hands in his armpits, even as one of the other Naglons sat up as well as he could in his cling wrap. The Naglon sitting up, the one with the blue marks on his face, said, "Head-Fist, I request permission to be reassigned to the Sast vessel, to evaluate their war decommission activities."

"Denied, Chir!" snarled the Fist. "You will return with us to testify that the blasphemer Tragan is dead. And that his moral failings led him to accept shameful captivity."

"I quit," said Chir. The Head-Fist stared at him, mouth agape.

"You WHAT?"

"I quit! I will stay with the Sast and study their blasphemies so that all may know of them and be illuminated as to their unclean ways," said Chir.

The Naglon Head-Fist's face was so swelled that he could not speak, and he had to be led out by his other crew members. Sarah Jane, finally free of the wire, stepped out of his way as he stumbled past. Chir went to the Sast Captain and bowed his head.

"Please Captain, I beg you, let me stay!"

The Captain tilted his head, and looked speculatively at the young Naglon. "I do happen to be in need of a second Assistant Navigator. You can take the tests for that, after you have rested and had dinner." The Captain's hand encircled Chir's waist, and slid under the edge of his loose jacket. "And then rested some more."

Chir turned and buried his face on the Captain's shoulder; the Captain looked at the Doctor and flashed his facial stripes in a sort of whole-face wink.

The Doctor winked back. He leaned over and whispered to Doctor Pri, "Does this mean your war is over?"

"I hope so, though it will probably take some time for the other side to realise it. But if they try to suppress the nature of Tragan and Avva's relationship, we do have some lovely film footage to show."

The Doctor frowned and wagged his finger. "You aren't going to turn them all into carpets are you?"

"No…but we might lay them like a rug."

The Doctor groaned and clutched his stomach in feigned agony at the pun. Then he turned to the telepathic Sast boy who had arrived at his elbow as soon as he thought of him - of course. He said urgently, "You have freed Sarah, now I need to tell you where to go. I can't give you the specifics of what will happen, there's too much paradox risk in that."

"Tell us of the people we shall meet there, their nature and their ways, and we shall do the rest. People are our specialty," the boy said.

The Doctor's mind raced: Kaleds, Thals, cruelty, Daleks, betrayal, Davros, honour, Nyder, justice, Gharman, Mogran, war, Ronson, Ravon, and war, the endless war. People, faces, feelings, impressions, theories and long years of thought about Skaro and Davros all poured out of the Doctor and into the Sast before him. The boy's face contorted as he took in the knowledge that the Doctor offered, his stripes fading to pink, and around him other Sast caught their breath or winced.

"Do we have contract?" the Doctor asked.

The boy reached out and took the Doctor's hand in his tiny ones, and around him a dozen holographic hands also reached to be a part of that clasp. "We do. We shall send our emissaries. When the deed is done, the Universe will be whole again, from one end of Time to the other. And you and yours shall decide if you owe us - a favour."

"A favour?" asked the baffled Sarah, but the Doctor just turned and headed for the TARDIS.


	14. The Survivors Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All's well that ends well. Right?

Finally, finally, they were aboard the TARDIS, and the wheezing shuddering of its passage had never been more welcome to Sarah Jane's ears. Get away, away from all this. Never had Sarah Jane wanted more than to just go home and fret over something harmless like the water bill.

She watched the Doctor, labouring over the TARDIS controls but frowning, as though deep in some private thoughts.

"Do you think you did the right thing?"

The Doctor looked up. "Hmm, what?"

Sarah Jane elaborated. "Making that contract with the Sast, to have them go back and assist you on Skaro. Is that safe? Isn't it against the Blini Effect or something?" She hadn't followed everything that the Doctor and the Sast had been talking about, but a return trip to the planet of the Daleks did seem to be part of the plan.

"The Blinovitch Limitation Effect? No, that has no bearing on this; so long it is the Sast travelling to Skaro, and not myself. But, you know, I wasn't thinking of that."

"Oh?" Sarah leaned against the console. "What were you thinking of?"

"I was thinking of the dispersion of debris in free fall from a central point."

Sarah frowned. "What?"

"The abduction machine was mined, in such a way that it would spit off maximum debris when it went off, correct?"

"Well, that's what you said the Naglons said."

"And Tragan and Avva could have set the explosives on one section of the hull not to go off. Say, the section under the Righteous Flea."

Sarah shook her head. "Yes, but there wasn't any time! They tied me into the transmat, put on that strip-show of theirs, pushed the button, and then there was a flash of light-"

Sarah stopped, her mouth hanging open.

The Doctor continued her thoughts for her. "A flash of light, yes. I saw you wince when you arrived on the Sast ship. A flash like you see when you come out of a stasis field, and the lights have changed, right? They could have done their little show, and recorded it. Recorded it for playback. Put you into a stasis field, and set their message to play in, say, ten minutes - and set the transmat jamming field to turn off at the same time. You would be in the stasis field, while they raced down to the Flea and strapped themselves in. The recording plays, stasis field goes OFF as the transmat goes ON, the mines detonate, and the Flea flies clear with the debris, and at the same instant you are beamed out onto the Sast ship, safe and sound and a witness that Avva and Tragan were on that ship when it exploded."

Sarah tried to think of an obvious mistake in that scenario, and couldn't. She ran both hands over her hair. "They could have. Damn, they could have done it. If they had planned it in advance, and they might have. Paranoid, the pair of them! So you think they got away?"

"Maybe. We will probably never know. If it did happen that way, they'll go into hiding for good."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Doing little Punch and Judy shows to amuse the primitive natives?"

"I don't know. You spent time with them. Is Tragan a reformed character? Or is he going to strangle Avva and take over the Flea the first chance he gets?"

Sarah stood and thought, hardly aware that the TARDIS was landing, its wheezing fading away into silence. 

"I think…I think…that it might turn out all right for them. Which is probably a damn sight more than they deserve, but it's better than nothing. Or being killed by the Naglons. I guess."

"Home again, home again!" announced the Doctor cheerily, and opened the TARDIS doors to reveal the grey of a London evening.

"Impressive," said Sarah. "You actually landed where you took off from."

"I just hope I can do it again," muttered the Doctor to himself, fidgeting with the controls.

Sarah moved towards the door, with K-9 at her heels. Before they opened, however, she turned back.

"And that's it?" she asked. "You're just going to let me walk out of here, without saying goodbye?" She frowned. "You really aren't well. Is someone going to look after you?"

"What?" he said, distractedly.

"Is there someone travelling with you?" she said, slowly. "Someone who can take care of you? Because I've gotten much too old." The last was said with a smile in her voice.

The Doctor let go of the controls. He walked to Sarah, touched her face with its new lines around eyes and mouth. Smile lines, mostly. 

"Never," he said, his own eyes too wet. "You'll never be too old to take care of me. And there's a girl," he corrected himself at Sarah Jane's harrumph, "a woman, who travels with me now." 

"Good," she said, nodding her head a little. "That's good."

He swallowed. "I…I tucked a few useful gadgets inside K-9's casing. In case you happen to, oh-"

"Have a sudden need to foil an alien invasion?" She raised one eyebrow and smiled.

"Something like that."

Sarah's eyes were a bit too wet as well. The Doctor walked back to the controls, slowly, and then turned and faced her as he opened the doors. The brilliant Earth sunlight came streaming in, and they both looked at it for a moment before turning their attention back to each other. For both of them, it was in many ways the light of home.

Practically, Sarah Jane picked up K-9 to carry him, rather than be seen by the neighbours with a robot dog following her. Her eyes did not leave the Doctor as she did this. There were no words to say, or maybe too many words to say. And then, she finally did think of something.

"Doctor? Even if I don't see you again…"

"Yes, Sarah Jane?"

"Have a fantastic life." And without looking back, she went, out into London and back to her home.

He closed the doors behind her, and his hands automatically worked at the controls. Resetting the destination for a certain beach.

"I will," he said to himself, and to her. "I will, I promise."

He hoped he could keep that promise. Forever.

 

* * *

On a beach in Barcelona, the door of the TARDIS opened. Of course. And the Doctor emerged.

Could it ever have been any other way?

Rose noticed, as he trotted across the hot sands to join her, that white trainers had mysteriously replaced his brown wingtips.

"Why the new shoes?" she asked.

"Och, a dear friend once told me, always wear comfortable shoes."

"Och?" she asked, as they walked together, again together, towards the bright buildings of Barcelona.


	15. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere, at an angle away from Dunwich, Massachusetts ...

When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country.

Even a traveller from space may wonder at the air of desolate dilapidation, the gorges of problematic depth, and the air of ancient mystery that seems to brood over the too-thick forests.

Deep below, two such travellers were making their way through a damp and drafty tunnel, with only the glow of the abnormally puffy fungus, and a small hand torch, to light their way.

"Who would have thought that we would end up here?" fretted Tragan. "Earth, of all places! Miserable little planet, no decent hunting, idiotic natives, completely cut off from the vast tapestry of interstellar art and leisure."

Avva patted his back - well actually, somewhat lower than his back. "Let's not be glum. What you have seen on the surface does not begin to approach the riches and wonders of the Earth's depths. Did you ever think that there would be a Sast hive here, for example?"

"You said it wasn't a Sast hive, but a neural pattern reflection, what does that mean?"

"Think of myself and them as sisters and brothers under the soul, not of the flesh. They shall be like the Sast, but changed from being born and raised on Earth. The light of our mind had shone here and they have grown towards that light. Do you understand?"

"I certainly don't-"

They were both interrupted by a sound; squelching, as though something vast and gelatinous was being slopped over the rocks ahead of them. Avva tilted her torch up.

And up.

What she illuminated was vast and white, covered with flickering colours. Great masses of its flesh rose and bubbled and sank back down, as it undulated and pulsed without ever moving from where it clung.

"What is that?" whispered Tragan.

"That, dear, is a shoggoth." Avva's voice was warm. "Pellucid and variable, endlessly inventive, splendid hunting partners, and matchless prey. You will find, Tragan, that, Tragan? Tragan!"

Avva shook his elbow and he turned his face to her, startled; his own pulsing flesh nearly matched that of the shoggoth. Avva read the colours rippling across it and winced.

"Tragan, whether you realise it or not, you're flirting. Stop that! You'll break its heart."

The shoggoth wriggled in a most loathsome fashion, and turned an incandescent shade of pink.

Then voices came from around the side of the shoggoth, and footsteps. Tragan stepped forward; he knew English and Avva did not, though she assured him that she knew the recognition codes of these pseudo-Sast and would be able to gain them entry.

The people who approached there were short, apparently Human females. Twins, Tragan thought: both had the same red curly hair, blue eyes and pale skin. He stepped forward and said, "Greetings from Sast PrimeHive 09 AA Thet. We come in peace."

Avva followed this with a liquid flow of syllables that apparently made sense to the two Earth women. They smiled, and one said, "Greetings to you and our home is yours. Welcome to JHive North American Division 13 OO Bokk."

"We have a ship," Tragan said. "We need to get it moved to safety."

One of the women answered, "We shall move it. But come; let us see to your pleasure."

Tragan kept grumbling to himself, with only Avva to appreciate it, about damp tunnels and cold shale and living underground like a Trigunian moss rat. He ignored the several strangely slanted passageways they went through, except for the last, because as he stepped through the exit he felt a twisting that somehow reminded him of the jump to hyper.

"What was-" and Tragan was silenced.

The rough gravel floor of the tunnel sloped downwards in front of them, and faded into soft blue-green grass. The grass was interlaced with tiny periwinkle flowers that opened and closed in rhythm. Ahead, as far as the eye could see, were gentle hills covered with the same grass and trees whose branches twined into spirals. And between the hills were broad rolling valleys, rushing rivers, and narrow stone roads. Here and there peering out from under the trees were houses and what might be temples. It was a world, a world all of itself under the Earth, and the sky glowed with a steady yellow-green illumination.

The scene should have been bucolic; instead it was immensely and powerfully strange. There was a creeping tension in the air, a suggestion that the angles that the stone walls formed were not quite angles of normal geometry, and that the Gods worshipped in the temples in the distance were not like any other Gods.

Avva sighed. "Is this spacious enough for you, my sweet?"

Tragan did not reply, but he stepped back and slipped an arm around Avva's shoulders. She leaned into his side.

As they and their guides walked down the sloping meadow, to where a vehicle drawn by particularly large and lumpy amphibians awaited, Tragan again translated what Avva was saying.

"I bring news of a new contract. We are to send an emissary to a place and a time where a new species is being created, to influence its destiny for all time. Our contract is with the Doctor, the last of the Time Lords. He tried this mission - and he failed. We must go to work beside him, and see that things go differently."

One of the women hopped onto the front of the wagon, and the other stared at them both, her face turning pale for some reason. Tragan sniffed to himself. How could you even tell what these people were thinking when the only colours they turned were red, pink and white?

"A difficult contract. We shall have to step softly," she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The character of Tragan the Naglon originated in the BBC audio drama/novel "The Paradise of Death" by Barry Letts; my own imaginings of what happened to him after the 'official' history, and how he met Avva, are captured in "A Pair of Dice."

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written before I had seen any of the Tenth Doctor Episodes, or any of the Sarah Jane Adventures; it is firmly Alternative Universe, and I've elected to ignore any contradictory information that was added to the canon after the regeneration of Nine into Ten.
> 
> Tragan the Naglon is from the Third Doctor audio adventure 'The Paradise of Death.'


End file.
